Tag: India

Savage Beasts by Rani Selvarajah

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The Greek myth of Medea is transposed to 18th century India in Rani Selvarajah’s debut novel, Savage Beasts. Although I haven’t read very much about Medea – except where she has appeared as a secondary character in other novels I’ve read, such as Madeline Miller’s Circe – it was actually the Indian setting that attracted me to this book rather than the Greek myth aspect and I expect it will have equal appeal to readers of historical fiction and those who enjoy mythology retellings.

The novel opens in 1757 in Calcutta (now known as Kolkata). The East India Company, under the leadership of Sir Peter Chilcott, are advancing on Bengal and war seems inevitable, but James Chilcott, Sir Peter’s nephew, has arrived in Calcutta ready to make a bargain. He is prepared to betray the company and reveal their plans, he says, but he wants something from the Nawab of Bengal in return. Although the Nawab isn’t convinced, his daughter, Meena, is captivated by the handsome young Englishman and agrees to help him. When things go wrong, James and Meena are forced to flee Bengal, leaving a scene of death and devastation in their wake.

So far, I could see the parallels with mythology – Meena in the role of Medea, daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, and James as Jason, who comes to Colchis on the Argo in search of the Golden Fleece. When Meena and James leave Bengal, they encounter Meena’s aunt, Kiran, whom I quickly identified with Circe. The later parts of the myth are less familiar to me, but as far as I could tell the novel continued to follow the basic outline, with one or two nice twists towards the end.

What let this novel down for me was the writing. I hate to be too critical of an author’s first novel, but I did find some of the word choices odd or inappropriate. Characters ‘smirk’ all the time, on almost every page – that’s when they’re not ‘sneering’ or ‘scoffing’. I lost count of how many times these words were repeated. I also struggled to believe in Meena as a convincing woman of her time. It seemed unlikely that the daughter of a Nawab (a Mughal ruler of similar status to a prince) would have the freedom to hang around the docks of Bengal on her own, as Meena does in the opening chapter, and her subsequent actions feel more and more anachronistic.

I did like the basic concept of moving the Medea story to 18th century India and the idea of James/Jason as part of a colonial power coming to take what they can from Bengal/Colchis is an intriguing one. For this to work, though, there really needed to be a stronger sense of time and place, but sadly, I couldn’t think of the characters as anything other than modern people in historical costume. Despite my negativity, I stuck with the book to the end and did occasionally become drawn into the story; it’s been receiving a mixture of reviews, including plenty of four and five star ones, so evidently other readers have enjoyed it more than I did. Give it a try if it appeals – and please let me know if there are any other retellings of the Medea myth you can recommend!

Thanks to HarperCollins UK, One More Chapter for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

This is book 21/50 read for the 2023 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge.

Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden

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I started reading this for Brona’s Rumer Godden Reading Week, but didn’t manage to finish it until the week was over. Still, I’m grateful to Brona for motivating me to pick up my first Rumer Godden novel, even if I’m late with this review!

Black Narcissus, published in 1939, is one of Godden’s best known books, made into a successful Powell and Pressburger film in 1947 and adapted again for television by the BBC in 2020. It tells the story of a group of Anglican nuns who set out to establish a new convent in an abandoned palace in Mopu, high in the Himalayas. Once known as ‘the House of Women’, the palace had been home to the General’s harem; now the General’s son has donated it to the nuns for them to use as a hospital and school for the local community. A group of missionary brothers had already tried to do the same, but left after just a few months, giving us an early indication of the difficulties and challenges the nuns will face.

Leading the mission is Sister Clodagh, the newly appointed Sister Superior, and she is accompanied by four other sisters, each with a different role to play in the new convent. As the Sisters try to adapt to their new way of life, Mopu gradually casts its spell upon them and each finds herself being affected in a way she had never expected. Sister Philippa, responsible for the convent gardens, worries that she is becoming ‘too fond of the place’; Sister Honey grows too attached to the children who come to the school and to the hospital; Sister Ruth becomes obsessed with the General’s charismatic agent, Mr Dean; and Sister Clodagh receives constant painful reminders of her past in Ireland and the man she once thought she would marry.

There are other characters – the General’s heir, Dilip Rai, a handsome young man who comes to the convent in search of an education; Kanchi, a beautiful girl from the village whose uncle wants her to spend some time with the Sisters because she is ‘behaving so badly that no one wants her’; and Ayah, the elderly housekeeper at the palace – but the focus of the novel is on the nuns and how they try to adjust to the unfamiliar world in which they find themselves. The culture of Mopu is very different from anything they have previously experienced and despite advice given to them by Mr Dean, the nuns struggle to understand the local traditions and superstitions. As the story progresses it seems that they will never understand and that they are doomed to fail in their mission as others have failed before them.

This is a dark and atmospheric novel, but in a quiet and restrained way. There are some moments of drama but this is a story driven by the characters and their inner thoughts and desires as their repressed feelings rise to the surface and tensions grow, particularly between Sister Clodagh and Sister Ruth. I’m not sure whether it’s a book I would read again, but I’m very pleased to have read it once and will definitely be reading more by Rumer Godden.

This is book 26/50 from my second Classics Club list.

Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh

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Amitav Ghosh has written nine novels, as well as several non-fiction books, but so far my experience of his work has been confined to Sea of Poppies, River of Smoke and Flood of Fire, three novels known as the Ibis Trilogy, which are set in China and India during the First Opium War of 1839-1842. I loved those books, so even though his new one, Gun Island, sounded completely different, I was still looking forward to reading it.

Unlike the Ibis Trilogy, Gun Island is set entirely in the modern day. Our narrator, Dinanath Datta – known as Deen – has been leading a quiet, uneventful life in Brooklyn as a dealer of rare books. In fact, sometimes it is too quiet and uneventful. Approaching his sixties and feeling very alone in the world, Deen visits Bengal, the place of his birth, in the hope of meeting someone special with whom to share the rest of his life. Instead, he meets a distant relative who tells him the story of the Gun Merchant, a legendary figure who had dramatic adventures at sea while fleeing the wrath of the snake goddess Manasa Devi, before taking refuge on the island of Bonduk-dwip or ‘Gun Island’, a land free of serpents.

As Deen digs deeper into the legend and embarks on a journey to one of the historical sites associated with the story, he enlists the help of his friends Piya, a Bengali-American teacher, and Cinta, an Italian academic. But it is not until he gets to know two young men – Tipu and Rafi, who help him to see the world from another perspective – that Deen finally begins to unravel the riddles of the Gun Merchant.

The first half of the novel, set in India and America, is fascinating; I particularly enjoyed Deen’s visit to the mangrove forests of the Sundarbans. Although I found the pace quite slow, I loved the exploration of the Gun Merchant legend and what its true meaning may have been. Amitav Ghosh is obviously an author who likes to play with words and language, something which is more prominent in Sea of Poppies and its sequels but is apparent in this book too. We – and Deen – soon discover that some of the names of places and people mentioned in the legend could mean something entirely different than they initially seemed to.

Two other themes play an important part in the novel and both are hugely relevant to modern life: climate change and migration. These are introduced into the story gradually at first, as Deen’s friends share their theories of how increasing temperatures and rising water levels are leading to the movement of both wildlife and people. In the second half of the book, however, after the action switches to Venice and begins to focus on the stories of migrants who have made the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean from Libya, the story seems to lose its way. Ghosh clearly feels passionate about these issues, but the way he incorporates them into the novel is a bit too heavy-handed and at times I felt as though I was reading a long essay or an article in The Guardian instead of a work of fiction. I think part of the problem is that we see everything from Deen’s perspective and, for most of the book, he is a passive onlooker, listening to accounts of other people’s experiences rather than experiencing things for himself.

Gun Island is an interesting read but the balance between the story and the message isn’t quite right. There are also far too many coincidences, with Deen meeting people by chance whom he had previously met on the other side of the world. As I did enjoy those other books by Amitav Ghosh, I would be happy to try more of his work, but this particular novel just wasn’t for me.

This is book 3/20 of my 20 Books of Summer.

Before the Rains by Dinah Jefferies

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Whenever I want a book to transport me to another country and another time, I need look no further than Dinah Jefferies. So far her novels have taken me to Ceylon, Malaya and French Indochina; this one, Before the Rains, is set in Rajputana, India, in the 1930s.

Our heroine, Eliza Fraser, has a passion for photography and hopes to build a career for herself as a photojournalist. When an old family friend and British politician, Clifford Salter, arranges for her to spend a year photographing the royal family of one of India’s princely states, she is both delighted and nervous. India is where she grew up and she still feels a connection to the land and the people, but it is also where, at the age of ten, she witnessed the death of her father in Delhi.

Arriving at the palace where she will live for the next twelve months, Eliza finds that not everyone is happy to have an outsider interfering in their affairs, especially when they discover that she is a widow. Other people, though, are much more welcoming – including Jayant Singh, the younger brother of Prince Anish. When Jay offers to escort Eliza around the countryside in search of subjects for her photographs, she is distressed by the poverty she sees and urges Jay to do something to help his people. In return, Jay helps her to understand the effect British rule has had on India. As they discuss these and other issues and get to know each other better, a friendship forms between them which quickly becomes something more…but Eliza knows that there can only be any future for them if Jay is prepared to defy both his family and the expectations of society.

Like all of Dinah Jefferies’ novels, this one features some lovely descriptive writing, bringing to life the sounds, colours, tastes and smells of India. But along with the beautiful descriptions, there are some brutal, horrifying ones, such as an account of a widow throwing herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre, followed by a discussion of the custom of sati, as well as the fates of unwanted baby girls and of women suspected of witchcraft. For all Eliza had spent her childhood in India, she had been insulated within the British community and it’s only now that she is going out on her excursions with Jay that she feels she is truly starting to understand the country, its history and its people.

Although I loved the setting, I didn’t enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed some of Jefferies’ others, which is mainly due to the fact that I found it predictable and too reliant on coincidences – there were at least two plot twists towards the end that I found completely unconvincing. I also struggled to believe in Eliza’s romance with Jay; I liked both characters, but I thought it seemed too convenient that on arriving at the palace Eliza would immediately catch the eye of a prince. Maybe I should have just been less cynical and more prepared to suspend disbelief.

This is probably my least favourite of Dinah Jefferies’ novels, but I’m still looking forward to reading her new one, The Missing Sister, which will be set in 1930s Burma.

Historical Musings #44: Exploring India

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Welcome to my monthly post on all things historical fiction. Having just finished reading Before the Rains by Dinah Jefferies, in which a British photographer in the 1930s is sent to India to take pictures of the royal family of a fictional princely state, I thought it would be interesting this month to look at other historical novels set in India.

One of my all-time favourite historical fiction novels is The Far Pavilions by M. M. Kaye, set in 19th century British-ruled India. Last year I read one of Kaye’s other novels, Shadow of the Moon, which is also set in India, but in a slightly earlier period, covering the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. I read this as part of a readalong hosted by Cirtnecce who is from India and speaks very highly of M. M. Kaye’s writing and understanding of the country.

A similar book, and another one that I loved, is Zemindar by Valerie Fitzgerald, which again is set during the Mutiny. I also enjoyed In a Far Country by Linda Holeman, about the daughter of two British missionaries living in 19th century Lahore.

I can think of two dual-time period novels I’ve read which are set at least partly in India. One is The Midnight Rose by Lucinda Riley (in which the historical thread involves a girl who befriends an Indian princess in 1911) and the other is The Sandalwood Tree by Elle Newmark, in which the action moves between 1947 and the 1850s, both important periods in India’s history.

I also loved The Strangler Vine by M. J. Carter, a fascinating historical mystery set in 1837 during the rule of the British East India Company. Then there’s Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer, a fictional biography of E. M. Forster, focusing on the time when Forster was working on the novel A Passage to India. A completely different sort of book is Rebel Queen by Michelle Moran, about Rani Lakshmibai who rules the state of Jhansi along with her husband, Raja Gangadhar Rao.

It seems that most of the historical novels I’ve read set in India have been from a non-Indian (usually British) perspective, but I have also read a few by Indian authors. One of these is The Twentieth Wife by Indu Sundaresan, the story of Mehrunissa, the future Empress Nur Jahan. This book is set much earlier than any of the others I’ve mentioned so far – in 17th century Mughal India. There’s also Amitav Ghosh’s Ibis trilogy, which begins with Sea of Poppies, although the trilogy is set in China as much as in India and tells the story of the First Opium War.

A God in Every Stone is a novel by Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie, set in 1930s Peshawar where the Khudai Khidmatgar movement are attempting to bring an end to British rule in India. Finally, The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie is a magical realism novel which takes us to a 16th century India populated with giants and witches, where emperors have imaginary wives and artists hide inside paintings.

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Now it’s your turn. Have you read any of these books? Which other historical fiction novels set in India can you recommend?

Shadow of the Moon by M.M. Kaye

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I really have no idea why I haven’t read this book before now. The Far Pavilions has been one of my favourite books since I was a teenager, but for some reason it just never occurred to me to look into what else M.M. Kaye wrote until recently, when I read two of her Death In… mystery novels. When I saw that Cirtnecce was hosting a readalong of Shadow of the Moon this summer, it seemed the perfect opportunity to try another of Kaye’s historical novels in the hope that I would love it as much as The Far Pavilions!

Shadow of the Moon was originally published in 1957 and revised in 1979. Like The Far Pavilions, it is set in India, but at a slightly earlier time – before and during the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. Our heroine, Winter de Ballesteros, is born in Lucknow to an English mother and Spanish father. Orphaned by the age of six, Winter is sent to England to be raised by her great-grandfather, the Earl of Ware, but the country of her birth still holds a special place in her heart and she dreams of returning one day to the Gulab Mahal, the place she considers home.

Winter is eleven when she meets Conway Barton, who is visiting from India, and she is captivated by his good looks and his connection with the country she misses so much. Conway, with his eye on Winter’s fortune, suggests a betrothal, but it is not until six years later that Winter is old enough to go and join him in India for the wedding. Now Commissioner of Lunjore, Conway says that he is far too busy to escort his fiancée across the sea himself, so he sends his assistant, Captain Alex Randall, in his place. Unknown to Winter, however, her betrothed is no longer the man she thinks he is and has another reason for wanting to delay their meeting. Will the marriage take place or will Alex be able to change her mind during the long voyage to Lunjore?

There’s a romantic aspect to Shadow of the Moon, then, but the historical element is just as important. Cirtnecce has put together two excellent posts (here and here) describing the political landscape in India in 1857, how the country came to be ruled by the British East India Company and the factors leading to the rebellion. All of this is explored in a lot of depth throughout the novel, showing the same impressive level of research and the same understanding and sympathy for India and its people that I remember from The Far Pavilions.

The descriptions of India itself are wonderful and vivid. Whether she’s writing about the streets and bazaars of Lunjore or the relentless heat of summer and the relief of the monsoon, Kaye always chooses just the right words to bring the scene to life. The horrors and atrocities of the Mutiny are also described in vivid detail, although a relatively short portion of the novel is devoted to the actual rebellion and much more to the gradual building of tension, ending in the controversy over the new Enfield rifles which sparked the revolt (the British required the sepoys to use cartridges which were smeared with pork and beef fat, offensive to both Muslims and Hindus).

Lunjore, where much of the action is set, is a fictional district on the borders of Oudh (although it is portrayed so convincingly I had to check to see whether it was a real place or not) but the situation which unfolds there is similar to that being played out elsewhere in India. The British commanding officers are seemingly blind to what is going on around them, refusing to listen to stories of unrest amongst the Indian people and unwilling to doubt the loyalty of their armies. Alex Randall is one of the few exceptions – a man who thinks for himself and who tries to see things from the point of view of others. It’s so frustrating to watch his advice and warnings repeatedly falling on deaf ears as his superiors tell themselves he is worrying about nothing and stubbornly refuse to heed his words.

I found Alex an interesting, complex character, torn between his feelings for Winter and what he sees as his duties and responsibilities towards both the Company and the people of Lunjore. I was particularly intrigued by his relationship with Kishan Prasad – two men who are on ‘opposite sides’ but who each understand what the other is trying to do and under different circumstances might have been friends. With the bridging role he plays between the British and Indian perspectives, Alex often reminded me of Ashton Pelham-Martyn from The Far Pavilions. It took me a bit longer to warm to Winter – I was irritated by her infatuation with Conway and had to keep reminding myself that she was only seventeen!

Whether or not the romance captures your imagination, though, I think there should be something in this novel to interest most readers…the fascinating historical background, the colourful portrait of another time and place or maybe the adventure (plenty of daring escapes, disguises, ambushes and secret meetings by moonlight). I loved it and now I can’t wait to read M.M. Kaye’s other historical novel, Trade Wind, and the rest of the Death In series.

This is book 11/20 for my 20 Books of Summer challenge.

The Strangler Vine by MJ Carter

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the-strangler-vine I love a good historical mystery and when this one was recommended to me recently (thank you, Pam!) I remembered that I already had a copy on my Kindle and couldn’t leave it to languish there any longer. Having read it, I wish I’d found time for it earlier – it’s an excellent book – but on the positive side, there are now two more in the series which I can read sooner rather than later.

The Strangler Vine is set in India in 1837, when large areas of the country were ruled by the British East India Company. Our narrator is William Avery, a young officer with the Company’s army. Originally from Devon, he has grown up reading the work of Xavier Mountstuart, a fictional author and poet whose writings sound similar to Rudyard Kipling’s and which have given him a romanticised view of India. Having spent nine months in Calcutta, however, he is starting to feel disillusioned with “the monstrous climate, the casual barbarities of the native population and the stiff unfriendliness of the European society”.

Disappointed that he still hasn’t been summoned to join his cavalry regiment in North Bengal, Avery is growing frustrated and bored – until the day he is asked to accompany an older officer, Jeremiah Blake, on a special mission. It seems that his literary hero, Mountstuart, has gone missing while carrying out research for a new poem and Avery and Blake have been given the task of finding him.

The Strangler Vine is a wonderful, fascinating novel; there are so many things I enjoyed about it that I’m not sure where to start! First of all, there’s the relationship between the two main characters, Avery and Blake, who, like all good mystery-solving duos, are two very different people who complement each other perfectly. Young, naïve and loyal to the Company, Avery is more instantly likeable and although he can be slow to pick up on clues, the fact that he never seems to know any more than the reader does makes him the perfect character to guide us through the novel. There’s a sense that where Indian culture, politics and history are concerned, Avery is learning as he goes along, which means background information tends to be given in large chunks rather than being lightly woven into the story. This style won’t appeal to every reader, but I found it all so interesting that it didn’t bother me.

Jeremiah Blake is a more unusual and intriguing character; although he still has connections to the East India Company, he no longer actively works for them – his knowledge of Indian languages and marriage to an Indian woman have aroused the distrust of the other officers who consider him to have ‘gone native’. His attitude towards Avery is abrupt, rude and dismissive and because we only see him through Avery’s eyes, he is a complete enigma at first. Eventually his true character starts to be revealed, but I was still left with the feeling that we have more to discover about Blake.

The mystery element of the novel is quite complex and what seems to Avery at first to be a straightforward search for a missing man soon develops into something with much deeper implications. It all revolves around the cult of Thuggee – organised gangs of thieves and murderers who worship the Goddess Kali and who are causing widespread fear and panic amongst the British in India. Mountstuart is thought to have been researching the Thugs at the time of his disappearance and so Avery and Blake, following his trail, also become drawn into the mystery and controversy surrounding the cult.

I loved The Strangler Vine; apart from the aspects of the novel I’ve already mentioned, I also really liked MJ Carter’s writing; it’s intelligent and detailed, she brings the setting vividly to life and, while I can hardly claim to be an expert on the India of the 1830s, if there were any inaccuracies or anachronisms I didn’t notice them. I can’t wait to join Avery and Blake for another adventure in The Printer’s Coffin.