India, July 25 -- 1Your book engages with details that several authors wouldn't have considered exploring and stories that many deemed fictional. How important was it to you to document these details? When I started working on this book I understood that, while details about the life of the Rani of Mandi were scarce, something else was evident: she had crossed the lives of many important and interesting characters - the Alsatian banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn, the groundbreaking artist Amrita Sher-Gil, the Russian guru-artist-enterpreneur Nicholas Roerich, and the hero of French resistance Jean Rosenthal, among others. I found the way these lives developed and intersected with the tragic arc of hers extremely interesting. And I made a choice: my book would not be a straightforward biography, but the story of a quest - the quest for Amrit Kaur of Mandi, a princess whom history and other forces had obscured. Through this quest, it would also be a cross-cultural portrait of an era: the era of the end of the British Empire, India's Partition, and the tragedy of World War 2 in France. 2This quest for the Rani of Mandi came along when you were grieving. How were you able to channel your energy towards telling Amrit Kaur's story? They were certainly difficult years for me. I was grieving the loss of my brother; I separated from my husband; I started a new life in Paris. At some point, I did doubt that I would ever find the truth about the story of the Rani of Mandi selling her jewels to help Jewish friends leave France during German occupation, and paying for her courage with her life. Too many people didn't want me to discover what really happened. What sustained me was my commitment towards Bubbles, the Rani's daughter, who, in her 80s, wished to leave this world knowing why her mother abandoned her in 1933, and was never spoken about again in her family. Bringing closure to her and showing her, through some letters I found, that the Rani did want to go back to her daughter and son, but was stopped from doing so, was a worthy reward for me. 3The Rani of Mandi could have been a celebrated figure for LGBTQIA+ people. A crucial part of her personal life was hidden. Would you consider that an act that hampered the advocacy for queer-feminist rights in India? No, I wouldn't. It was a different era; we cannot judge it by today's values. She was bold in choosing to live more uxorio with the woman she loved - an American, and a Protestant. And she was equally bold in refusing to compromise. She paid a very high price for her choices. But she wasn't an activist, and she certainly wasn't open to sacrificing her privileges to the cause, as activists must do....