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The Siege

Trapped Inside the Taj Hotel. Run or Hide?

Adrian Levy author Cathy Scott-Clark author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd

Published:3rd Jul '14

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Siege cover

The Siege by Adrian Levy & Cathy Scott-Clark - a searing account of the 2005 terrorist attacks at Mumbai's famous Taj Hotel

On 26th November 2008 the Taj Mahal Palace hotel in Mumbai is besieged by Pakistani Islamists, armed with explosives and machine guns.

For three days, guests and staff of the hotel are trapped as the terrorists run amok.

On 29th November commandos launch Operation Black Tornado. The world holds its breath.

The Siege is a helter-skelter thriller, threaded with powerful human stories. By turns tragic and heroic, the events are told through a cast of real characters, who were thrown together in the luxurious, century-old Taj: waiters, chefs, captains of industry, hedge funders, celebrities, tourists, policemen, special forces and terrorists. For the first time, this astonishing book takes us through the news footage and into the heart of the hotel. Each hostage has a choice: hide, run or fight. What would you do?

This classic non-fiction account will grip readers of No Easy Day and No Way Down and will be enjoyed by fans of 'United 93' and 'The Towering Inferno'.

Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy are the authors of four books, most recently the acclaimed The Meadow: Kashmir 1995 - Where the Terror Began (Harper Press UK; Penguin India). For 16 years they worked as foreign correspondents and investigative reporters for the Sunday Times and then the Guardian. In 2009, the One World Trust named them British Journalists of the Year, having won Foreign Correspondents of the Year in 2004. They co-produce documentaries for British and American television; their most recent for C4 Dispatches, on Pakistan's war on terror, City of Fear, was nominated for an award at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Currently they are filming new projects in Myanmar and China.

Compulsive and brilliantly researched. Reads like a fast-paced thriller -- William Dalrymple

Totally unputdownable, utterly absorbing - a minute-by-minute account of a hotel under onslaught. Here we have hostages, police and terrorists; their every fateful action and decision; the moments of sheer chaos and the crucial seconds of clarity

-- Paul French, author of the Dagger and Edgar Award-winning Midnight in Peking
Meticulously researched, beautifully written: an unstoppable read. This is not your ordinary thriller -- Ahmed Rashid, author of Descent into Chaos
A heart-pounding read and an investigative tour de force, The Siege is an essential primer on terror in the 21st Century. It shows where mass-murderers come from, how they think and what it is like to be caught in the cross-hairs of their madness -- Blaine Harden, author of Escape from Camp 14
Propulsive, intense, exceedingly well-reported . . . a tragedy and a thriller with concussivehuman and political resonance. I read it in what felt like three blinks * New York Times *
Heartrending, chilling, compelling, astonishing . . . as action-packed as any thriller and so hard to put down that it must surely end up as a movie * Sunday Times *
An investigative masterpiece... so vivid it ought to be a movie -- Tina Brown

  • Winner of CWA Non-Fiction Gold Dagger 2014

ISBN: 9780670922598

Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 35mm

Weight: 500g

368 pages