Many people are familiar with the sounds and flavours of the region south of the Vindhyas?temple bells, coffee and jasmine, coconut and tamarind, exquisite dosais and appams?but little is known about its history. Rajmohan Gandhi, a historian and biographer, tells the South Indian experience in the contemporary era in this significant study, the first in more than fifty years. The story he portrays is really about the four powerful cultures of Kodava, Konkani, Marathi, Oriya, Tulu, and indigenous peoples, as well as the cultures that have affected them: Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, and Kannada. The Deccan sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda, and Bidar have united to overthrow the kingdom of Vijayanagara, one of the last great mediaeval empires of the South, when the story starts around the end of the sixteenth century. After the fall of Vijayanagara, less powerful nayakas or sultans ruled the region. Competition raged between these rulers and the many European trading companies. By the seventeenth century, only the French and British remained to fight it out, in association with Indian rulers and princely states.