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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. More of an atmosphere (the end of the Raj) than a plot (it revolves around and around the gang-rape of an English girl, Daphne Manners, in the Bhibigar Gardens) this is told in diary entries, letters and reports written by different people in his or her personal style and is sometimes tedious, sometimes lively. It took me several weeks to read but I gradually felt enveloped in the feeling of unease that was simmering in India in 1942. I liked it better when I reached the part written by Daphne describing her relationship with Hari Kumar, an Indian educated at a British public school. There is a stifling and sometimes shocking sense of class; I am glad I was never part of that world as I have no idea where I would have fitted in. (  ) overthemoon | Jan 30, 2010 |  I do remember seeing parts of the TV series as a child, so was curious to see what the book was like. Not disappointed in the slightest. I read V. Seth's A Suitable Boy, so found the background to the story both familiar and interesting (esp. the way he slowly reveals the details from the different people's perspective). I would thoroughly recommend it to people who like a bit more meat in their books, not just one story, but how so many lives were affected by the end of the Raj. (  ) soffitta1 | Dec 8, 2009 | it took me months to read this book. Perhaps over a year. However, I stayed with it and by the time I finished I couldn't put it down. I read the next in the series. That one took me about six months to finish. The next one in the series took about two months. The last one took about two weeks. I loved these books. 1  benitastrnad | Mar 2, 2009 | 1811 The Jewel in the Crown a novel by Paul Scott (read 23 Nov 1983) Until I saw the list of the 12 best post-World War II novels written in English I was unaware there was such a person as Paul Scott. This book was published in 1966 and is the first volume in the four or five volume work known as The Raj Quartet. It tells of an event on 9 Aug 1942 in Mayalore, India, and is outstandingly told. Daphne Manners is an English girl who falls in love with Hari Kumar, an Indian who lived in England from age 2 to age 18. Edwina Crane is a 57-year-old British teacher who goes crazy. Ronald Merrick is a middle class police chief who proposes to Daphne. The story is told from various angles, and it strikes me as comprehensible Faulkner. I enjoyed the sure hand of the author greatly and I am sure he is saying something about Indian-English relationships and saying it in a more comprehensible way than E. F. Forster did in A Passage to India (though I don't have a lot of confidence in my appreciative powers of January 1952 which is when I read Forster's book). Scott reminds me of Joseph Conrad--but again, more "popular" in construction. I think Scott is very good and most of this book as compelling reading. My discovery of Paul Scott is a pleasant one and I anticipate with real pleasure my future reading of him. None of his characters are wholly admirable or sensible--but the days of all good or all bad in fiction are no doubt over. This book is a major event in my reading life. (  )1 Schmerguls | Oct 5, 2008 | excellent evocation of place ( ) dgrayson | Jun 10, 2007 |  no reviews | add a review
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August 1942. World War II is reaching its apex, with the conflict consuming almost all of Asia and Europe. In Southeast Asia, the Japanese have driven the British army out of Burma and are threatening India, where Britain's beleaguered forces find themselves facing an increasingly hostile Indian populace tired of decades of unfulfilled promises of freedom. On a dark monsoonal night in the town of Mayapore, amid an outbreak of anti-British rioting, a gang of Indian men rape a young British woman. Through this rape, we are introduced to a cast of characters engulfed and subsequently carried away by the storm of events. Paul Scott's The Jewel in the Crown is part historical novel, part mystery, part love story, part allegory. But to reduce it to any of these elements is to miss its irony, poignancy, and beauty. Full of complex characters and rich in atmosphere and symbolism, this is a novel that works on many different levels.
The events unfold through the eyes of a varied cast of characters--both British and Indian--united by their inability to escape the straightjacket of race and social roles, no matter their class, education, or political views. This is particularly excruciating for the rape victim and the young Indian man accused of the crime. These two are drawn to each other by their alienation from the roles they are expected to play. Englishwoman Daphne Manners finds herself increasingly estranged from her countrymen, while Hari Kumar, an Indian who has lived in Britain for all but two years of his life and is so anglicized that he doesn't even speak Hindi, can't abide his native land. Their struggle with the identities and constraints that society imposes on them and the manifestations of their conflict form the core of the novel, providing the timelessness and richness that make it one of the great novels of the 20th century.
The Jewel in the Crown, originally published in 1966, is the first of the Raj Quartet, the sweeping epic that looks at the collapse in the 1940s of British rule in India. It was followed by The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence, and A Division of Spoils. --Jonathan King
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:52:31 -0500)
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