The Raj Quartet - Vol 2
  • Published: 15 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9781857152982
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 1032
  • RRP: $39.99

The Raj Quartet - Vol 2

Buy from…
Amazon Booktopia Dymocks QBD Readings Find local retailers Find local retailers Abbeys Angus & Robertson Boomerang Collins Fishpond Gleebooks Harry Hartog Kinokuniya Robinsons The Nile Your Bookstore

The Raj Quartet Volume 2 contains The Towers of Silence and A Division of Spoils

The Towers of Silence ~
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 Daphne Manner and Hari Kumar; the desperate grief an old teacher feels for an India she cannot rescue; and the cruelty of Captain Ronald Merrick, Susan Layton's future husband.

The Division of Spoils ~
The fourth and final title is a moving conclusion to The Raj Quartet. As the British presence moves inexorably into its last days, the fall of the Empire signals the end of an era, and a new beginning. For the Hindus and Muslims, the political reality signals inevitable post-war recrimination and future territorial wrangles. And for the British - for the Laytons, Merrick and Guy Perron - the final partings are swallowed into the great upheaval.

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. Book one, The Jewel in the Crown, describes the doomed love between an English girl and an Indian boy, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. This affair touches the lives of other characters in three subsequent books, most of them unknown to Hari and Daphne but involved in the larger social and political conflicts which destroy the lovers.
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.
  • Published: 15 July 2007
  • ISBN: 9781857152982
  • Imprint: Everyman
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 1032
  • RRP: $39.99
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Paul Scott

Paul Mark Scott was an English novelist, playwright, and poet, best known for his monumental tetralogy The Raj Quartet. His novel Staying On won the Booker Prize for 1977.

Also by Paul Scott

My Secret Garden Shed
The Raj Quartet - Vol 1
Staying On
The Jewel In The Crown
The Towers Of Silence
The Day Of The Scorpion
A Division Of The Spoils
See all

Praise for The Raj Quartet - Vol 2

Not many of E. M Forster's readers could have imagined then that his book's theme -- relations between Europeans and non-Europeans -- would soon become an acute human and literary concern. The topic has recurred often enough in fiction since then, but never, to my knowledge, has it been treated as brilliantly as it is in Paul Scott's novel, The Jewel in the Crown

The New Yorker

Through the Layton family the changing spirit of the raj may be judged....From a work like this, all who care about fiction can take heart.

The Times

A monument eloquently expressive of affection and grief

Times Literary Supplement