Rukhsana Ahmad

Explores the incredible story of Annie Besant’s relationship with India and the boy who went on to become one of India’s greatest teachers and thinkers – Krishnamurti. 1916: India is simmering with discontent against the Raj. Enter English proto-feminist Annie Besant, notorious at home for the match-girls’ strike, political, charismatic. In India she finds a new family and a new cause. Gandhi hails her as the leader of the Congress Party after she courts imprisonment for promoting Indian Home Rule. She admires him – but can rulers ever befriend the ruled? Can Annie’s great love affair with India last? ... or is she mistaken in her beliefs, politics and adoptions? ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rukhsana Ahmad‘s stage plays include: Song For Sanctuary, The Gate-Keeper’s Wife, Black Shalwar, River On Fire (shortlist Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2002), The Man Who Refused to be God, Last Chance and Partners in Crime. Radio plays and adaptations include: Song for a Sanctuary (CRE award, runner-up), An Urnful of Ashes, The Errant Gene, Nawal El Saadawi’s Woman At Point Zero, Jean Rhy’s Wide Sargasso Sea (shortlist CRE and Writers’ Guild Award for best adaptation), R.K Narayan’s The Guide and Nadeem Aslam’s Maps For Lost Lovers. She also wrote for Westway and helped to create Pyaar Ka Passort for BBC World Service Trust. Her fiction includes a novel; The Hope Chest (Virago) and several short stories have been published internationally. Her translations from Urdu include We Sinful Women, and Altaf Fatima’s novel, The One Who Did Not Ask. Currently she is working on Letting Go, a new play for Pursued by a Bear, and an adaptation for the BBC of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children.

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