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W. Empire pod UK.com. Hello and me, Empire with me Anita Arand

and me William Darumpel in this episode of

Empire we have our very own Anita Arand

to talk about her astonishing prize-winning book, The Patient assassin,

which won a prize I've been trying to get and fail. I've been shortlisted three times,

never got it. It's pretty much the only prize you have not won.

The Hessal Tilchman Prize which is the big pen history prize and no book has ever

deserved to win this prize more because it is an absolute model for how to write history

which is both deeply researched and archivally astonishing but also which reads like a thriller.

I remember reading it full of envy and admiration a couple of years ago when it came out,

the patient assassin.

Well it's funny because we were on a book tour and I kept hiving off to do research or I kept disappearing.

So we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were, we were on a book tour of India for CoinO and we happened to be in the Punjab and I just kept

going, Willie I'll be back in three days because I was going through archives and boxes of

papers.

And you were at that point you were not talking about what you were doing so I don't know what you were up to, you know these little disappearances, but you had a very smug look at your face when you came back each time as your story began to form.

And perhaps the best place to start is to ask why this story means so much to you personally.

So it was a story I never wanted to write because it's difficult, it's complicated and it's hideously painful, but it's kind of entwined in my family history,

...