Spies, Lies and Allies: The Extraordinary Lives of Chatto and Roy

About the Book Chatto and Roy. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya and M.N. Roy. Two revolutionaries, one goal—India’s Independence. Spies, Lies and Allies is a thrilling tale about two forgotten revolutionaries who led lives that defy belief. It takes the reader on a ride through Kolkata, Hyderabad, London, Paris, Berlin, Mexico City and Moscow. Chatto and Roy meet spies, dictators, femme fatales, assassins, revolutionaries and bomb makers. They encounter Lala Lajpat Rai, Veer Savarkar, Vladimir Lenin, Sun Yat Sen, Chiang Kai Shek, Joseph Stalin, Gandhi and Nehru. They travel in disguise and survive assassination attempts by the British secret service. They have tumultuous love affairs with suspected Communist spies. They flirted with anarchism, then became communists, and Roy would eventually end up founding his own humanism.Chatto’s famous sister Sarojini would distance herself from his path, and his friend Nehru would eventually follow the Gandhian path. Roy would be ignored in newly independent India. But if Chatto and Roy were failures, they were magnificent ones. They battled for their ideas, and their ideas lived on, even if they died forgotten. In this compelling dual biography, the bestselling author of Lady Doctors follows the threads of the converging and diverging lives of two extraordinary figures.About the Author Kavitha Rao is a London-based author and journalist. Her work has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times, South China Morning Post, Mint, The Hindu and various other publications. She is the bestselling author of Lady Doctors.Spies, Lies and Allies is her fourth book. She is available on www.kavitharao.net and @kavitharao on X.