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The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India’s Quest for Independence by Anita Anand is the true story of Udham Singh, a Sikh orphan, setting out on a decades long scheme to murder an English diplomat. Ms. Anand is a British radio and TV personality, author and journalist.

I knew nothing about Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab, Udam Singh, or the Jallianwala Bagh massacre (Amritsar massacre) before I started this book. After I read The Patient Assassin: A True Tale of Massacre, Revenge, and India’s Quest for Independence by Anita Anand I at least have some firm grasp of the events and history.

The book tells of the events that led to the 13 April, 1191 massacre in the Punjab province of India, the aftermath that transpired for days, weeks, and years afterwards. The book follows a timeline which juxtaposes between Udham Singh, the assassin, and Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the Lieutenant Governor of Punjab.

Sir Michael was the one that ordered Brigadier General Reginald Dyer to Amritsar who was responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in Amritsar. The General, however, died before Singh could exact his revenge, and Sir Michael became his target. It took Udham Singh two decades to get close enough to assassinate Sir Michael in the name of anti-colonialism. These days Singh is considered a hero in India for single handily avenging the massacre.

The narrative is fast paced and portrays historical events vividly and in depth. The narrative strays away from leading the reader, the Ms. Ananad does not play favorites and does not cheapen the historical narrative with identifying heroes and villains. Humans are frail, subjective and flawed, our stories and histories also reflect these qualities in an eye opening way.

The author wrote a solid, well researched book in which she tries to be as balanced as possible. A gripping story which is presented in a morally ambiguous way still relevant in today’s world.

Lately, I seem to have had much more luck reading nonfiction. In this case, this fascinating nonfiction book reads like a thriller. It is meticulously researched and cinematic. It’s also extremely educational. Frankly, I do not understand how Britain got away with its colonialism for so long. The first part of this book provides a mesmerizing and detailed account of just some of the barbarity of the Raj. Under British rule, self sufficiency in rural India was destroyed. “The peasant class, forming the majority of India’s population, found itself either starved of ancestral lands or reduced to the status of indentured labour, thanks to a system of punitive taxation. Farmers who continued to work the land were forbidden from growing edible crops. Instead, they were forced by their new foreign overlords to produce cotton and indigo, vital for Britain’s lucrative and growing textile industry.” Indians understandably objected to this, which led to the Indian Mutiny of 1857. In one incidence during the mutiny Indians killed 204 British women and children. In retribution, the British executed around 100,000 sepoys (Indian soldiers working for the British) and tens of thousands of civilians in a series of hideously brutal atrocities. After squashing the mutiny, the British became more wary and harsh to prevent any further insurrection.

This book begins in 1940 with the execution of Udham Singh in London. Udham, a Sikh from India, had spent the past 21 years planning the assassination of Sir Michael O’Dwyer, the man he held responsible for the 1919 massacre carried out by British troops at Jallianwala Bagh, a garden in Amritsar. At the time of the massacre, O’Dwyer was the lieutenant governor of Punjab, but the actual massacre was carried out under the command of Brigadier General Reginald Dyer (later known as The Butcher of Armritsar). O’Dwyer and Dyer feared that political protest would reach Punjab. Suppressing a peaceful political gathering was designed to send a message. Many of the people in the garden were merely eating their lunches. Before he reached the garden, Dyer had already made up his mind to fire on the people immediately, with no preliminary order to disperse being given. The troops started shooting and continued until they ran out of bullets. Dyer’s only regret was that he hadn’t had machine guns. Between 500 and 600 people were killed, and several times that many were wounded, including many children. The British didn’t bother with a body count, or tend to the wounded.

After a thoroughly whitewashed investigation in England, Dyer was forced to resign, but remained a hero in England. O’Dwyer spent the rest of his life praising the actions of the troops. Dyer died of an illness (depriving Udham Singh of the chance to assassinate him), but neither man ever expressed any repentance, however they weren’t alone. This massacre wasn’t the only attack. The British went on to use planes to drop bombs on people on roads and fired machine guns into crowds. The Indians had to be taught a lesson. In the view of another Brigadier General: “Composed as the crowd was of the scum of Delhi city, I am of firm opinion that if they had got a bit more firing given them it would have done them a world of good and their attitude would be much more amenable and respectful, as force is the only thing that an Asiatic has any respect for.” A British reporter in India was critical of the attacks. He collected evidence and challenged the Raj and their whitewash of events. He was arrested and deported. An Indian reporter was sentenced to three years of hard labor. In addition to the violence, there were humiliations. “In Lahore, school children were ordered to parade three times a day for thirty minutes at a time, saluting the British flag as they marched. The order applied to infant classes too, thus children as young as five marched.”

Singh claimed to have been present at Jallianwala Bagh. Whether or not this is true is unknown, but the massacre clearly had a profound impact on him. The last part of the book deals with his travels, alliances and assumed identities. He attracted the attention of the police and MI5 many times so it was surprising that he had no trouble entering a lecture at the India Society in Westminster where he killed O’Dwyer and shot several other men. Singh is now honored in India.

This is an excellent book and its author did a wonderful job with the narration of her audio book. It was just another reminder of how much I have to learn about history.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

The author's painstaking research and attention to detail is obvious in the writing of this book. There were many facts that I only discovered after reading this!

I found this book really interesting and finished it in one day , perfect for any history lover of any book lover

I seem to be on a real India kick lately [I cannot seem to learn enough about this fascinating country and the people that live there] and so when I saw this book on NetGalley, I jumped at the chance to read more history of this amazing county. I was NOT expecting the book I read.

You would think, that by the title, I would have had a clue that this was not going to be the easiest book to read, but apparently, I was having a stupid day and thought it was going to be another book rich in Indian history and that was that. AND, to be honest, it is about that. But it is also about so much more.

I had not heard of Udham Singh and I absolutely had not heard of [which is a travesty in my opinion] of the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre of 1919. The lead up to the actual massacre and then the act itself filled me with rage, sadness and despair for the people that were there and for the survivors of that horrific act [I actually could not speak of it for several days as it made me want to vomit just thinking about it, much less speaking about it]. I mentioned to a friend that in my opinion, not all the monsters came out of Germany - what Michael O'Dwyer and Reginald Dyer did was nothing short of what Hitler did, except that he did it on a bigger stage and scale. Note this quote from the book:
"Sir Michael simply could not understand why his masters in London failed to see the deficits in the natives that he did. It maddened him that the greater autonomy was being given to inferior races. Step by step Britain would lose the entire Raj unless men like him stopped it from happening." This is just one of the many examples of just how one-sided this man was in regards to the Indian people. And the massacre was just a tipping point for him in regard to how he looked and treated and acted about the people of India. And considering that Dyer was born and raised in India, the way he perceived the Indian people and his actions in regards to the massacre continued to surprise me over and over again. I believe there may be a special ring of hell for men like these two.

The problem I had over and over again was my moral compass and what I thought of Udham Singh. Certainly he was a murderer and as the story unfolds, we see him as a user and a liar and someone who is absolutely driven by revenge and vengeance [his disappointment over not being able to kill Dryer is very striking], but at the same time, you see him as someone who loves his country and the men and women and children in it and who sees the massacre as the last straw by the British Raj. At some points, I found myself almost agreeing with him. As O'Dwyer comes home to England and continues to both justify the massacre and spew his hatred of what he deems his "inferiors" [much to the delight of those he chose to surround himself with], you almost wish that Udham Singh would get on with it and kill the man already. It was very much a catch-22 situation and even at this moment of writing this review, I am still troubled by how this book left me. I certainly don't condone murder and vengeance, but I find it difficult to be unsympathetic to Udham Singh.

I always say it is important to know your history, but it also important to know other's history as well, so we will not be doomed [one can hope] to repeat such atrocities. This story is a perfect example of this - this is history we all should know and remember and pray that we never, ever repeat it.

Thank you to the Author, NetGalley and Scribner Publishing for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a true story that reads like thriller fiction. It was hard to put down and a very fast paced book. Very interesting.

I would like to thank netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy free of charge. This is my honest and unbiased opinion of it.

An obscure story that is finally being told to a wide audience. A young Sikh left for dead after a British massacre whose desire for revenge spanned two decades. Reads like a thrilling fiction story, but it's completely factual and thus even more interesting. A well-researched story told in a very engrossing fashion.