It’s been nearly a decade since I read Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet. I read the first two novels in Beate Ruhm von Oppen’s preceptorial at St. John’s College, Annapolis during the final semester of my first M.A. program. Before finishing the program in December 2003, I also bought the remaining t...
I quite liked The Day of the Scorpion, although I preferred The Jewel in the Crown, the first book in the Raj Quartet. The Jewel in the Crown concentrates on the events surrounding a single incident, a rape, as they are perceived by various characters with different viewpoints and levels of invo...
“English is the language of a people who have probably earned their reputation for perfidy and hypocrisy because their language itself is so flexible, so often light-headed with with statements which appear to mean one thing one year and quite a different thing the next.” Whenever I run into some...
India, 1943: In a regimental hill station, the ladies of Pankot struggle to preserve the genteel façade of British society amid the debris of a vanishing empire and World War II. A retired missionary, Barbara Batchelor, bears witness to the connections between many human dramas; the love between ...
The fourth book of the Raj Quartet, and the war is over in Europe, the Americans have dropped their atom bombs, but there is still Malaysia to be taken back from the Japanese. In India, demission of power from the UK is a certainty – the socialist government back home are focusing on domestic iss...
‘It’s time, father.’ ‘Has Mr Mehboob arrived?’ ‘Yes, half-an-hour ago. But Hosain said you hadn’t bothered to go to bed and were only dozing, so I left you until the last moment.’ ‘Even on stationary trains I don’t sleep. Just for me we could all have come by car and not bothered with this.’ He w...
The baby isn’t finished yet.’ For a while Susan did not look at the child. She averted her head no matter what her mother said or Travers said and the nursing staff said. It began to look like a classic case of rejection. It was not until Sarah took the child in her arms and impressed on Susan th...