Flappers & Fiction

Nusr-ed-Deen Shah is perhaps the wealthiest prince on earth, yet his private museum displays priceless lapis lazuli vases alongside cheap, squeaky hand-organs. Such contradictions define a monarch who sketches caricatures of his diplomats one moment and orders a cruel execution the next. From a poverty-stricken childhood hated by his own father to the murder of the only vizier who truly loved him, this account reveals the “Light of the World” in all his complexity. It is a portrait of a dynasty where diamonds and decay sit side by side.