In 1839, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, one of India's greatest rulers, died and his vast empire was plunged into chaos. Less than a decade later, weakened by internecine rivalry and intrigue, Punjab fell into the waiting hands of the British.  Theruler who signed away the kingdom and its treasures, including the famed Koh-i-noor diamond, was an eleven-year-old boy, Duleep Singh, the youngest of Ranjit Singh's acknowledged sons.
 
In this nuanced and poignant novel that draws upon true events.  Navtej Sarna tells the unusual story of the last Maharaja of Punjab.  As the British annexed his kingdom, Duleep was separate from his mother and his people, taken under British guardianship and converted to Christianity.  At sixteen, he was transported to England to live the life of a country squire – an exile that he had been schooled to seek himself.  But disillusionment with the treatment meted out to him and a later realization of his lost legacy turned Duleep into a rebel.  He became a Sikh again, and sought to return to India and lead his people.  But the attempt only dragged him into the murky politics of nineteenth-century Europe, leaving him depleted and vulnerable to deceit and ridicule.  He died a lonely, defeated man in a cheap hotel in Paris.
 
Told in Duleep Singh's own voice, and the voice of five characters based on his contemporaries, The Exile is a compelling and deeply moving portrait of one of themost tragic figures of Sikh and Indian history. It is, equally, an unsparing examination of British imperialism, and the greed and shortsightedness of the Indian princes that fed it.