It opens with the attempted rape of the author, aged 10, by, the unscrupulous elderly widower to whom she has been married by her desperate, destitute family; and for 400 heartstopping pages thereafter, the pace of Phoolan Devi's life story becomes, if anything, even more frenetic, grabbing the attention and shaking it relentlessly like a terrier with a rabbit. This volume represents a mere fragment of the 2,000 plus pages transcribed from the original interviews with the illiterate Devi, and it is to the credit of writers Marie Therese Cuny and Paul Rambali that the narrative momentum is sustained, allowing the courage - and determination of this extraordinary woman to shine out of a mire of injustice, social and, sexual prejudice and human misery
