In The Twilight Of Empire

THE RAJ QUARTET

One of the most incisive (and itself a lush miniseries in its day) is Paul Scott’s THE RAJ QUARTET, which includes THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN, THE DAY OF THE SCORPION, THE TOWERS OF SILENCE and DIVISION OF THE SPOILS. The stories follow different sets of characters, from the ambitious policeman who seeks to marry into an upper-class officer’s family, to a naïve English girl whose friendship with an English-educated Indian brings terrible consequences to them both, to a pair of sisters, one who questions the place of the English in India, one who immerses herself in the conventions of Anglo-Indian Society.

THE FAR PAVILIONS

Two of my all-time favorite novels paint a vivid picture of the India their author, M.M. Kaye, grew up in as the daughter of a British officer serving in a Guides regiment. Both are set earlier, during some of the first uprisings against British rule in the nineteenth century. THE FAR PAVILIONS (made into a dreadful TV mini-series) features an English boy, smuggled away for safety by his ayah during one of the massacres, who lives as an Indian for many years before being returned to his British roots; properly Anglicized again and turned into a British officer, he finds himself head of a detachment sent to escort two Indian princesses to their wedding—one of them, the girl he played with as a child. SHADOW OF THE MOON follows the story of an English girl born in India, orphaned and forced to live in England with relatives as a child, who realizes her dream of returning to the beloved home of her childhood by marrying a colonial official, a man she hasn’t seen for years. Falling in love with the British officer sent to escort her, who is everything heroic her husband turns out NOT to be, she weathers the terrors of the 1857 Sepoy Uprising.

A SINGULAR HOSTAGE

Set slightly earlier, in 1838, A SINGULAR HOSTAGE, first in a trilogy by Thalassi Ali, features another heroine who comes out to India to find a husband and falls in love with the country. Working as a translator, Mariana Givens travels with the entourage of Lord Auckland, the Governor-General, to meet the Maharajah of the Punjab, Ranjit Singh. As the British try to entice the Punjab ruler into an alliance that will give them control over Afghanistan, Mariana is drawn to the Maharaja’s one-eyed hostage, the infant Saboor, who has been stolen from his grandfather, a Sufi sheik. Charged with returning the boy to his family, she falls in love with his father, the Muslim diplomat Hassan Ali Khan. The story of her exploits as she struggles to find her place, torn between the British and Muslim worlds, continues in BEGGAR AT THE GATE, its vivid descriptions of India flavored with bits of Sufi mysticism, until the final resolution of her situation during the Afghan wars in COMPANIONS OF PARADISE.

A PROPER EDUCATION FOR GIRLS

An expose of the masculine tyranny of Victorian life, A PROPER EDUCATION FOR GIRLS by Elaine diRollo, is set half in pre-uprising India of 1857, half back home in England. The novel tells the story of two sisters, one banished for her indiscretions to marry a sickly missionary in India, the other a virtual prisoner of her martinet father at their remote estate in England. While beautiful, adventurous Lillian takes advantage of her husband’s hypochondria and her freedom from her father’s control to explore the fascinating new world of the subcontinent, behind a demure façade, her sister Alice endures and plots her escape. When danger threatens Alice, a coded letter to her sister sets off a race to save her that confounds the conventions that bind each sister in place.