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“…The Wyndham and Banerjee series…”
I think back to 2016 and 2017 when the first books, A Rising Man and A Necessary Evil were published. Back then, they were called the Sam Wyndham series. I’m not sure exactly when things changed; when Sam Wyndham agreed to share top billing with his junior partner and junior officer, Surendranath Banerjee, but I think it was somewhere between books three and four. That change was unplanned. It seemed to just happen one day, and now I begin to wonder how and why it occurred.
Detective Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee: Suren to his friends; Surrender-not to his English superiors. He’s an odd fish, the scion of a wealthy Bengali Brahmin family, educated at Harrow and Cambridge and who arguably speaks English better than his English boss, Captain Wyndham. He’s one of the first Indian detectives recruited into the Imperial police force, but his skin colour and the system by which the British administer his country will condemn him to always fill the role of subaltern, to play second fiddle to men who might be less talented than him.
But it’s not only his colonial masters who’ve wronged him. I realise I have too. He was there from the start, arriving in my head within seconds of Sam Wyndham. From day one, they came as a pair and yet, when I started writing the novels, it was Sam’s voice I used, Sam’s point of view I stressed, and Sam’s head I inhabited.
People asked me, ‘Why did you chose to write from the Englishman’s perspective rather than the Indian’s?’ They asked me was I worried that white audiences might not identify with an Indian lead character?
The answer though was different, and was shamefully simple. My parents might have come from India, from Calcutta, the very city from which Suren hails; I might speak his language; I might have been brought up in his culture as much as I was with British culture; but when I started, I just didn’t feel qualified to write authentically from the perspective of an Indian. My lack of confidence as a writer meant I started writing the series from the point of view of the white Englishman.
If that slight to Suren was born out of necessity, I compounded matters by bastardising his name. Surendranath, a name meaning the King of the Gods, became Surrender-not, at least to the British officers who couldn’t pronounce any Indian name longer than one syllable. The name had come straight out of the history books. There had been a Surendranath Banerjee, and the British had called him Surrender-not, and I had chosen the name for that very reason. It was clever. I thought it might amuse my readers as it had amused me. Part of me regrets that now, because when we change a person’s name without their consent, we dehumanise them, and as Suren developed as a character, the nickname felt increasingly inappropriate.
For four books I’d portrayed Suren through the eyes of Sam Wyndham, his friend and superior. Now it was time for Suren to speak to you himself.
With each book Suren became less subservient, less willing to tow the line. And by book four, Death in the East, as he grew out from under Sam’s shadow, he, and not I, decided that he wasn’t going to stand for having his name mangled any more, at least not by Sam. Maybe that was the point where he earned his equal billing in the series title.
I confess, I’ve been rather startled by the pace at which Suren has matured. Of course I expected him to change and to grow, but not quite so fast. It felt like he was wanting to be heard. So naturally I had no choice. For four books I’d portrayed Suren through the eyes of Sam Wyndham, his friend and superior. Now it was time for Suren to speak to you himself.
Half of this new book is narrated not by Sam but by Suren, because, as he will tell you, this is his story as much as it is Sam’s, and that is important. When I started writing this series, it was to present the Raj from a different angle; to show my readers that there were at least two sides to every story. I guess then, that it is only right to give you Suren’s perspective as well as Sam’s, and I hope he, and you, forgive me for past sins.
Abir’s Wyndham & Banerjee detective series has been translated into fifteen languages. He’s twice won the CWA Dagger for best Historical Novel, as well as the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing. Abir’s parents are from Kolkata. He grew up in Scotland and lives in Surrey with his wife and two sons. The sixth in Abir’s Wyndham & Banerjee series – The Burning Grounds – is published in autumn 2025. Abir leads Sampan’s Death on the Brahmaputra journey in Kolkata and Assam.
