Adopted and raised by a thug, Ameer Ali committed around 719 murders in his lifetime just by the use of a roomal, strangling his prey with his grip, thus preventing any noise from being heard. Philip Meadows Taylor's Confessions of a Thug (1839) is the most influential novel about India and was one of the best-selling crime novels of the nineteenth century. In the course of a confession to a white 'sahib' the imprisoned Ameer Ali recounts his life as a devoted follower of Thuggee, a secret religious cult practicing ritual mass murder and robbery. Introducing a new standard of ethnographic realism to western fiction about India, Confessions of a Thug is a strikingly vivid, chilling and immensely readable thriller. This unique critical edition makes available a fascinating and significant work of Empire writing; a spine-tingling tale of crime of the Thugs of Hindustan.