In the 19th century, Bengal would witness a revolution like it never had. It began with a band of Englishmen, led by the brilliant William Jones. Then there was the enigmatic Rammohun Roy who invented a reformed Hinduism called the Brahmo Samaj; and his friend, David Hare, who conceived the idea of the Hindu College. There was the tempestuous Michael Madhusudan who created new forms of Bengali verse; and Michael's well-wisher, the scholar Vidyasagar, who fought fiercely for the cause of Hindu widows. There was Bankim Chandra, a civil servant who helped create the Indian novel. There were Jagadish Bose and Prafulla Chandra Ray, two lonely workers in laughably primitive laboratories who became the frontiersmen of Indian science; and Vivekananda, the monk who preached a new form of Vedantism, home and abroad. There was, finally, Rabindranath Tagore, the very epitome of the Bengal Renaissance. How did such an astonishing flowering come to take place? And how did it change India? Immaculately researched, told with colour, drama and passion, Awakening is a stunning achievement.