Heat and Dust

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Heat and Dust

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

Literature

Aug 13, 2018

Imagine a novel of manners adrift from the moorings of English country society and tenuously contained within “the Civil Lines” of a British colonial enclave in Satipur, India, in 1923. Having joined her husband, Douglas, there, Olivia Rivers finds herself unable to adapt to the provincial isolation of her compatriots. Drawn outside the stultifying social circle of her fellow British wives, Olivia falls in love with the rogue Nawab, a minor Indian prince, and secretly spends her days with him—until circumstances and a scandal threaten both her secret and her life. Tellingly, Olivia’s story is revealed years after the fact, as it is discovered by a descendant who has traveled to India in the 1970s to find out exactly what happened to her infamous forebear.

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Ames

4 d

This novel is a riot. It is a story within a story. A detective story uncovering the past of a family in post colonial India looking at the final years of Raj.

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