The Raj Quartet: The Towers of Silence, A Division of the Spoils (Everyman's Library)
Books / Hardcover
Books › Fiction › Historical › General
ISBN: 0307263975 / Publisher: Everyman's Library, July 2007
Set against the backdrop of Gandhi's calls for independence and a potential Japanese invasion, four masterful historical novels--The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, and A Division of the Spoils--covering the period between the Quit India riots of 1942 and the massacres that accompanied independence and partition in 1947 provide insight into the closing years of British rule in India.
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The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott's epic study of British India in its final years, has no equal. Tolstoyan in scope and Proustian in detail but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain. In The Towers of Silence, Barbie Batchelor, a British missionary and schoolteacher, befriends a British family and witnesses the trial of Hari Kumar, an Indian man accused of assaulting his beloved Daphne Manners, while observing the dangerously cruel Captain Ronald Merrick, Hari’s nemesis. In A Division of the Spoils, the chaos of the departure of the British and the fervor of Partition wreaks havoc upon the twilight of the Raj — and the end of a era. On occasions unsparing in its study of personal dramas and racial differences, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane, not least in the author’s capacity to identify with a huge range of characters. It is also illuminated by delicate social comedy and wonderful evocations of the Indian scene, all narrated in luminous prose. The other two novels in the Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown and The Day of the Scorpion, are also available from Everyman’s Library. With a new introduction by Hilary Spurling
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