Books by Kaiser Haq

In 1765, Mirza Sheikh I'tesamuddin, a Bengali secretary employed by the East India Company, traveled on a mission to Britain to seek protection for the Mogul emperor Shah Alam II. The mission was aborted by the greed and duplicity of Robert Clive, but it resulted in this remarkable account of the Mirza's travels in Britain and Europe. This is an entertaining, unique, and culturally valuable document of those journeys.

The Triumph of the Snake Goddess, a prose translation by the scholar and poet Kaiser Haq, is the first comprehensive retelling of this epic in modern English. Haq's Prologue explores the oral, poetic, and manuscript traditions, and Wendy Doniger's Introduction examines the significance of snake worship in classical Sanskrit texts.