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A review by lindzlovesreading
The Jewel in the Crown by Paul Scott
4.0
This is a very clever novel.
If you were ever interested in the last years before Indian Independence, this is the novel. After the arrests of Gandhi and other members of the Indian Congress of 1942 a white woman Daphne Manners is attacked and raped by an unknown gang. But this is not by any means a clear cut, simple historical fiction. Scott uses this one event to look at India under a microscope in 1942, the complex social hierarchies and political philosophies.
'Jewel in the Crown' is a very circular narrative, at times very stream of consciousness, most of the novel is told throw interviews of secondary characters, but I like how this gives a large physiological scope, the Kipling like army officer, the well meaning missionary, the radical, the saint, and the upper class Indian.
I just wish I knew nothing of this novel when I picked it up. I was watching 'Faulks on Fiction' when he discuses one of the Villains of the novel, but Scott opened up a different world, one that is on the point of boiling point, and the English are too busy having a tea party to know that water is bubbling over the pot. But with out Faulks I would have never heard of this book or the Raj quartet.
This is still very much an English view of India, but it is fair and well balanced, and a gorgeous piece of literature.
If you were ever interested in the last years before Indian Independence, this is the novel. After the arrests of Gandhi and other members of the Indian Congress of 1942 a white woman Daphne Manners is attacked and raped by an unknown gang. But this is not by any means a clear cut, simple historical fiction. Scott uses this one event to look at India under a microscope in 1942, the complex social hierarchies and political philosophies.
'Jewel in the Crown' is a very circular narrative, at times very stream of consciousness, most of the novel is told throw interviews of secondary characters, but I like how this gives a large physiological scope, the Kipling like army officer, the well meaning missionary, the radical, the saint, and the upper class Indian.
I just wish I knew nothing of this novel when I picked it up. I was watching 'Faulks on Fiction' when he discuses one of the Villains of the novel, but Scott opened up a different world, one that is on the point of boiling point, and the English are too busy having a tea party to know that water is bubbling over the pot. But with out Faulks I would have never heard of this book or the Raj quartet.
This is still very much an English view of India, but it is fair and well balanced, and a gorgeous piece of literature.