Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema

‘We are like the Corleones in The Godfather’—Randhir Kapoor There is no film family quite like the Kapoors. A family of professional actors and directors, they span almost eighty years of film-making in India, from the 1920s to the present. Each decade in the history of Hindi films has had at least one Kapoor—if not more—playing a large part in defining it. Never before have four generations of this family—or five, if you include Bashesharnath Kapoor, Prithviraj Kapoor’s father, who played the judge in Awara—been brought together in one book. The Kapoors details the professional careers and personal lives of each generation—box-office successes and failures, the ideologies that informed their work, the larger-than-life Kapoor weddings and Holi celebrations, their extraordinary romantic liaisons and family relationships, their love for food and their dark passages with alcohol. Based on extensive personal interviews conducted over seven years with family members and friends, Madhu Jain goes behind the façade of each member of the Kapoor clan to reveal what makes them tick. The Kapoors resembles the films that the great showman Raj Kapoor made: grand and sweeping, with moments of high drama and touching emotion. ‘Few books on Indian cinema have been written with such wit, clarity and sparkle’—Outlook ‘Jain writes in a language that is simple and pithy. . . it will keep alive public interest in the Kapoors who refuse to call it a day’—Telegraph ‘Immensely readable...will surely find a place in the Indian cineaste’s library’—Biblio