The Twenty Four

Bombay, September 1940. As the Battle of Britain rages, twenty-four Indian pilots board a troopship bound for England. They are Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Parsi, and Christian - colonial subjects volunteering to defend an empire that has not yet agreed to grant their country its freedom. Trained on Tiger Moths in the Scottish rain, blooded in Hurricanes over the English Channel, they will know brotherhood, prejudice, and devastating loss. Twelve of the twenty-four will not survive. Those who do will return to an India on the verge of Partition - the shattering of the very unity their squadron embodied. Based on the true story of twenty-four Indian pilots who flew for the RAF in World War II, The Twenty Four is a sweeping novel about men who flew above the borders that would define their century - and an elegy for the India that made them brothers. Two and a half million Indians served in the Allied forces during the Second World War. Their stories have never been told. Until now.