num_pages: 602
description: Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug (1839) is the most influential novel about India before Kipling's Kim and was one of the best-selling crime novels of the nineteenth century. In the course of a confession to a white 'sahib' the imprisoned Ameer Ali recounts his life as a devoted follower of Thuggee, a secret religious cult practising ritual mass murder and robbery. Taylor uncovered evidence of the crimes committed by bands of Thugs as a Superintendent of Police in India during the 1820s. Introducing a new standard of ethnographic realism to western fiction about India, Confessions of a Thug is a strikingly vivid, chilling and immensely readable thriller. This unique critical edition makes available a fascinating and significant work of Empire writing.
language: English
title: Confessions of a Thug
titlecomplete: Confessions of a Thug
genres: Historical, Crime, Classics, Adventure, India, Thriller, Victorian, Historical Fiction, Fiction, British Literature
ratings_count: 535
publisher: Oxford University Press