THE COROMANDEL COAST stretches along the east side of India between the Krishna River in the north and the southern tip of the subcontinent. So, when I began reading “Coromandel” by Charles Allen (1940-2020), I was expecting to read a history of this coast and its hinterland.

The book’s subtitle is “A Personal History of South India”, and that is what it is. Although the Coromandel Coast is mentioned within the text, the book is primarily a very fascinating, well-researched and reasoned history of southern India, and how that history was influenced by events that happened north of the Narmada River, which the author took as an approximate dividing line between the northern and southern parts of the subcontinent.

I am very glad I read the book even though at first I was hoping that the author was going to concentrate on the east coast of India, rather than the whole of the south of the country. In fact, there is a great deal about the west coast of southern India, which. fascinating as it is, is not the Coromandel Coast. Despite my disappointment that Charles Allen strayed from the Coromandel Coast, about which I was hoping to read, this is an excellently written book.