Nayan Chanda

Once the war was over, Vietnam was eager to embrace America against its historic enemy, China

The Black Death introduced new vocabulary - quarantine - the Italian word for 40, the number of days ship carrying diseased passengers were kept away from dock

In his book, Mr Ninan summons his encyclopedic knowledge of the Indian scene to present a rich panorama, through which he explains how India has reached where it has today and where it might be headed