Award-winning British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, who was in Bengaluru Wednesday, launched his new book titled ‘The World: A Family History’ at Blossom Book House. The launch of the book was followed by a conversation between Montefiore and journalist Ramjee Chandran.
The book, written during the Covid-19 pandemic, has been published by Hachette India and it describes the story of humanity from prehistory to the present day.
“The whole point of the book is to produce a really diverse and geographically broad book that feels new and fresh,” said Simon Sebag Montefiore. (Express)
Montefiore takes the readers on a journey of history through families which shaped the world. Some of them featured in the book include the families of the Caesars, Mughals, Mongols, Ottomans, Turks, Bonapartes, Nehrus, Saudis, Assads, among others. He believes that families are a basic unit of life and are both ‘familiar and familial’ to people. The author has combined the span of world history with the intimacy of biography.
Montefiore has extensively written about the role of women in history as one of the ideas of writing the book was no recognition of women in history. “When I was growing up, women were left out of history; there was a shortage of women and I wanted to put them back. In families, women are really important, in politics, women are very important, in the arts, in the work, in raising children, women are really important,” he said.
Talking about his book, Montefiore said, “There is a huge focus on Asia, Africa, South America and less than usual on Europe and North America. The whole point of the book is to produce a really diverse and geographically broad book that feels new and fresh.”
Explaining about the concept of family and his motivation to write the book, he added, “I wanted to write it because no one had written it yet and then it hit me that family is the answer, everyone has a family and it is a genre. that people understand and I wanted to make it accessible to anybody who may not know history.”
The author visited Bengaluru for the first time after attending the Jaipur Literature fest and will continue his world tour to Holland, America and South Africa.
Apart from his new book, he authored award-winning books ‘Stalin: the Court of the Red Tsar’ and ‘Jerusalem: The Biography’, he also authored books titled, Young Stalin, Sashenka, Written in History: Letters that Changed the World. .
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