A journey through Deccan, Goa, Madras, and Golconda portrayed with the freshness of a picaresque novel and the precious details of a miniature.

First days of January 1656: East India Company’s sailing ship anchors in the port of Surat, West India. Among the crowd of merchants and European adventurers, who disembark is an eighteen-year-old boy, Nicolò Manucci. He was only fifteen when he left Venice, hidden in the cargo hold of a little Mediterranean sail ship to Smirne – he’d run away from his parents’ poor miserable life to chase every traveler’s “oriental dream”: India. He had crossed the Ottoman Empire and Persia, stopping in Ragusa, Esfahan and Hormuz.

Wandering through the town while chewing a betel leave he’s just been offered, he didn’t realize the future that was awaiting him. And yet, this naïve and fearless boy would live for decades side by side with the men holding India’s destiny: the Moghuls.

Having grabbed the chance of entering their court in Delhi – where sat the famous jeweled Peacock Throne – Nicolò became a soldier, courtier, physician, diplomat, and the narrator of his own story.