In Search of Amrit Kaur: An Indian Princess in Wartime Paris
by Livia Manera Sambuy, translated by Todd Portnowitz
Penguin, £25


I can easily understand what led the Italian journalist Livia Manera Sambuy in search of Amrit Kaur. It’s a tantalising proposition.

The author is in India when she spots a photograph of Amrit, a princess of the Raj by birth and marriage, and reads of how she had reportedly been “arrested by the Gestapo in occupied Paris on the accusation of having sold her jewellery to help Jews”, surviving “less than a year of Nazi imprisonment”.

Could this striking, well-educated socialite really have made this sacrifice? Could there be a phenomenal, heroic, and erstwhile obscured tale for
Sambuy to unravel?

Indeed, the ingredients are there for a rollicking journey. Amrit’s father, Jagatjit Singh, a playboy who married a Spanish flamenco dancer and crashed cars all over Paris. Her sister-in-law, Sita Devi, known as the Indian Wallis Simpson.

Her husband, whose second marriage (while still wed to Amrit) caused her to flee and abandon their children. High-society types trotting across the globe as Europe collapsed. A princess ahead of her time, a feminist and original thinker, captured in Vichy France. What a story.

Except, unfortunately, there isn’t one. Not for want of trying on Sambuy’s part: she has evidently devoted years to determining whether Amrit did indeed attempt to save Jewish friends, and what happened as a result.

She has interviewed family members, dug through countless records and archives, explored every loose end. But not every mystery can be solved and secret life posthumously revealed. By the book’s end we have myriad theories, but Amrit and her deeds remain shrouded in mystery.

Instead, we get anecdotes about India under the Raj and the fates of the royal families — Amrit’s grandson is a mechanic in Chicago, the glory days long over — as well as various digressions investigating Amrit’s wider circle, the pre-war jewellery industry, and extensive reportage about Vichy France.

It’s both too detailed and not detailed enough. More, though, the author is nowhere to be found. Save a few sparse allusions to marital breakdown and her mother’s death, we get little sense of what motivated Sambuy.

What else was she doing while flying to meet Bubbles, Amrit’s daughter, or an American descendent of Amrit’s companion? Why this Indian princess, why this treasure hunt?

Coming in at more than 300 pages, I wanted more on Sambuy’s reason for travel.
Still, the book is not without merit. Plenty will stay with me, for example the history of the Rosenthal gem dealers. I learnt a huge amount about the Indian royal era and the upheaval of independence.

And undoubtedly Sambuy has shed some new light on Amrit’s fate, even if ultimately her lacklustre findings might better have been contained to a magazine feature.