The Patient Assassin is the dramatic true story of a celebrated young survivor of a 1919 British massacre in India, and his ferocious 20-year campaign of revenge that made him a hero.
Author Anita Anand is a British radio and television presenter and journalist.
At the core of The Patient Assassin is the story of Udham Singh, an Indian who sought to avenge the murders of his fellow countrymen by shooting Sir Michael O’Dwyer to death in London in March 1940. O’Dwyer was the lieutenant governor of Punjab at the time of the massacre in Amritsar.
Singh’s character and motivations “are rendered in such broad and sometimes speculative brush strokes that readers are likely to be left wondering what really drove him. Yet the book more than makes up for this shortcoming by reconstructing its key events in compelling, vivid prose,” critic Yudhijit Bhattacharjee said in a review for The New York Times.
Singh was executed on July 31, 1940, four months after he killed O’Dwyer.
His trial at the Old Bailey in June 1940 lasted only two days.
