"...a beautiful love story. It's epic, moving and as haunting as the title suggests."

(http://iwasateenagebookgeek.blogspot.com/2010/03/review-city-of-ghosts-bali-rai.html)

(click on the cover to buy City of Ghosts)

"...an episode without precedent or parallel in the modern history of British Empire...an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation."

Winston Churchill (8th July 1920)

1919. Amritsar is a city on the brink of revolution.

Innocent citizens, trying to escape ghosts from the past, are swept up in the riots, violence and tension. They are unaware that, as the fight for Amritsar reaches a terrifying climax, their lives will be changed forever...

City of Ghosts is the longest novel that I have written to date. It came about because I discovered that one third of all the soldiers who fought for Britain during World War One were non-white. I was shocked by this fact and determined to write an account of what those soldiers, most of whom were Indians, went through.

I also decided to write about the event that Winston Churchill referred to in the quotation above; The Amritsar Massacre of 1919. This was the single biggest slaughter of innocent civilians ever carried out by British troops and is part of the folklore of India's fight against British imperialism. The story also visits Brighton in 1915 where many injured Indian soldiers were hospitalised.

I spent nearly a year researching City of Ghosts before deciding that I didn't want to write an historical novel - at least not in the traditional sense. Instead I put away all of my notes and let my imagination tell the story. So whilst being based on true events, City of Ghosts is actually an imaginary tale which just happens to include real life people, places and events. And it is so much more than a story about war. It is also about love and loss, magic and myth, fantasy and ghosts. There are so many layers to the story that I have trouble deciding what genre it is. But then that's the point - I don't want it to belong to any one genre or style.

It has taken a long time for me to get this book ready and I am extremely pleased with it. I don't want to say too much about it - read it and see for yourselves. And I hope that you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

click on the image for more info