The book is rich in detail and offers many valuable insights into the working of Indian diplomacy — from the minister and senior officials right down to the security guard and cook in Baghdad. Clearly, Minister of State for External Affairs E. Ahmed emerges as the central figure and the author is fulsome in his praise. In Sudarshan’s account, Ahmed is the man in charge, the chairman of the Crisis Management Group who for 40 days has his hand on the tiller — keeping the families of the drivers assured, the media at bay and working the phones with Baghdad and well-wishers in the Gulf. Zikrur Rahman, an Arabic interpreter in the Foreign Ministry, and his senior colleagues are the men on the spot, in Baghdad, negotiating with elusive interlocutors. Sudarshan provides painstaking detail on a day-to-day basis, highlighting the intrigue, the duplicity, the bruised Iraqi sensibility and more.

This density of reportage and reconstruction (we even have a conversation between Ahmed and the PM in verbatim) limits the scope of the narrative, which is a pity. This book is the first attempt that I can recall of a major national crisis being fleshed out in valuable detail, and the otherwise opaque working of the internal structures of the government is illuminated. But there is no sense of issues being placed in a larger context.