Spy Princess: The Life of Noor Inayat Khan
by: Basu, Shrabani

Softcover. New Lebanon NY, Omega Publications, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 234 pages, b&w photos. Everything about Noor Inayat Khan was extraordinary. A great-great-great granddaughter of Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, she was born in Moscow to an American mother and an Indian Sufi Muslim father. Due to the unrest in Russia the family moved to London and from there to France where she spent the happiest years of her life studying music, child psychology and writing children's books. In 1940, her father having deserted the family and died in India years before, the family moved once again to England where Noor was trained as a wireless operator with the aim of sending her to German-occupied France to join up with the resistance. Noor was small and delicate, emotional, imaginative, shy, easily flustered and distracted. On the other hand there was her steely determination to serve her country, the desperate need for wireless operators and her perfect French. She was sent on her mission in June 1943. Her biography contains all the elements of an exciting spy novel but it was horrific and deadly reality. Clean copy.