AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Tiger Claw is inspired by the life and times of Noor Inayat Khan and the non-fiction accounts of many other resistance agents of WW II. Many historical people are mentioned in this book, but no living person is portrayed. A few new characters have been substituted for historical persons and some names have been changed. Most transliterations are from Urdu, some are from Arabic.

The first non-fiction biography of Noor, Madeleine, was written in 1952 by Jean Overton Fuller. William Stevenson summarized and embellished this account in The Man Called Intrepid. Later non-fiction writers commented on Noor’s story, like Rita Kramer in Flames in the Field. Noor’s brother, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, offered his tribute to Noor in his book Awakening. Noor is mentioned in footnotes to biographies of Hazrat Inayat Khan and discussed in books by retired agents of the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Recently, her story was presented with more context in Women Who Lived for Danger by Marcus Binney.

For me, these non-fiction accounts raised more questions about Noor than their facts could answer.

My depiction of Noor begins from fact but departs quickly into imagination, bending time, creating characters around her, rearranging or inventing some events to explore as if through her eyes, to feel what may have been in her heart.