Indira
The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi
By Katherine Frank
Houghton Mifflin, $35
ISBN 039573097X

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Katherine Frank, the highly acclaimed biographer of Lucie Duff Gordon and Emily Bronte invested six years of extensive travel and research into her newest book Indira: The Life of Indira Nehru Gandhi. The result is a richly detailed, complex portrait of the life of India's first female prime minister.

From her birth into the deeply political Nehru family, to her rise as a startlingly astute leader, to her assassination in 1984, Indira Gandhi's story is, to a great extent, the story of one of the most powerful Asian nations. A woman who loved India and worked for its independence from British colonialism, Indira also adhered to the democratic ideals and visions of her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, the countryís first prime minister.

When she was young, Jawaharlal Nehru warned his daughter and only child that she was "born into a world of storm and trouble." Rising to the post of prime minister in 1966, Indira's journey was not smooth, a point that Frank emphasizes. By many, Indira was seen as the "Mother" and even the "Empress of India" -- a shrewd public relations strategy she perpetuated in an effort to turn her gender into an asset instead of a liability. She was hailed as a hero after India won its war with Pakistan over Bangladesh and named the most admired person in the world by a 1971 Gallup poll.

However, she lost her popularity -- and many of her friends -- when she declared a state of emergency in India, including mass arrests and media censorship, in an effort to silence her critics. Her comeback in 1980 was tainted by political unrest in Kashmir, especially in the Punjab, where Sikhs found themselves the victims of badly chosen borderlines and battled to achieve autonomy. After allowing an attack on Sikh dissidents that nearly destroyed the Golden Temple, the holiest site of Sikhism, Indira was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards in 1984.

India is a nation often romanticized and usually misunderstood by the West. Katherine Frankís biography, marked by meticulous research and attention to detail, sheds new light on the country while bringing to life a controversial woman. Indira will satisfy both the novice to Indian history and the learned reader.

Susan Muaddi Darraj writes from Parkville, Maryland.