Rogues Among the Ruins

About the Book Rogues Among the Ruins portrays the conflict of civil servants caught between ideals and thirst for success. The novel adopts the style of great masters like Gogol and Cervantes who, in their search for truth, evoke laughter through tears.

The first part of the novel is a gripping fictionalized account of the workings of the Archaeological Survey of India and the painful predicaments of a dedicated but naïve scholar faced with temptations. The scholar's son, a morally indifferent bureaucrat, chronicles a later era in the second part. Through tawdry dramas, administrative acrobatics of sycophants and hypocrites, he encounters the sordid reality of powerful men and women who think they rule the country.

With sardonic humour, sympathy and reluctant respect, the narrator takes the reader on a journey through Glory Road where principles are discarded by the ambitious, where the proud encounter humiliations, where idealists are scorned, and sometimes those with stubborn strength overcome ordeals.

About the Author Achala Moulik went to schools in Washington, New York and London where her diplomat father was posted. Her mother taught her and her sister Bengali literature. She graduated from London University with the B.Sc. (Econ) degree. In the Indian Administrative Service she served in numerous capacities: Director General, Archaeological Survey of India and Education Secretary, Government of India, when the education programmed Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan' was approved. Achala's civil servant husband encouraged her literary endeavors.

She has published books on political & cultural history, novels, and a play Pushkin's Last Poem which was performed in Moscow and St. Petersburg. She was invited to Moscow to receive the prestigious Pushkin Medal from the Russian President in 2011. She received the Sergei Yesenin Prize in 2013 from the Russian Ministry of Culture.

**Contents and Sample Pages**