Finally finished it ! :)"December moved in, taking up residence with Noor in her cell, and freezing the radiator. Cold coiled in the bowl of her pelvis, turning shiver to quake as she lay beneath her blanket on the cot. Above, snow drifted against glass and bars. Shreds of thoughts, speculations, obsessions...some glue still held her fragments together."
There are writers and there is Shauna Singh Baldwin. The breadth and depth of her latest novel is breathtaking, and leaves you both exhausted and enthralled at the same time.
'Tiger Claw' is based on the true life of Noor Inayat Khan, of Anglo-Indian Muslim origin (and a direct descendent of Tipu Sultan), who served as a secret agent transmitting radio messages from Vichy France during the Second World War. As her life story is in the public domain, I'll make no secret of the fact that she was betrayed and then subsequently captured by the Gestapo and rather than being treated as a prisoner of war, instead was held as a 'night and fog' prisoner (ie. officially does not exist), and eventually executed by her German Nazi captors.
What starts off as a spy thriller, meanders into themes of love, betrayal and idealism. As the tides of fortune slowly turn against Noor, she still harbours the belief that one day she would be re-united with her Jewish lover who is held in an unknown concentration camp. The more poignant parts of the book are when she is almost resigned to the inevitability of death in prison, yet steadfastly refuses to show her fears and still stubbornly clings onto hope where there is none. There is a message in there for all of us somewhere in this book.
One of the more powerful parts of this book, is the parallels that Baldwin draws between German occupied France and British occupied India. Both were acts of aggression, and yet I wasn't aware until reading this book, that 4 millions Bengalis died of starvation during 1943-44 due to a deliberate policy by the British to divert rice to other parts of the empire. Almost as many people died in the Bengal famine as during the Jewish holocaust.
This book will leave a huge impression on me for a very long time. A quality read.
ps. You can read more of her life story here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noor_Inayat_Khan
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