"Provocative. Adams strips away Gandhi's saintly aura and explores the duality . . . of India's most famous leader." —Financial Times

Jad Adams traces the course of Gandhi's multi-faceted life, and the development of his religious, political, and social thinking over seven tumultuous decades: from his comfortable upbringing in a princely state in Gujarat; his early civil rights campaigns; his leadership through civil disobedience in the 1920s and 1930s that made him a world icon; and finally to his assassination by a Hindu extremist in 1948, only months after the birth of independent India.

An elegant and masterly account of one of the seminal figures of twentieth-century history, Adams presents for the first time the true story behind the man whose life may truly be said to have changed the world.