British Imperial Empire in Asia (various fictions)
Explore the best fiction and history of the British Imperial Empire in Asia, featuring classic novels like A Passage to India, The Raj Quartet, and The Far Pavilions, alongside thrilling tales from Bernard Cornwell and John Masters. Discover curated books on colonialism, mutiny, and cultural clash in India, Burma, and beyond.
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The Piano Tuner
by Daniel Mason
A New York Times Notable Book A San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News, and Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year “A gripping and resonant novel. . . . It immerses the reader in a distant world with startling immediacy and ardor. . . . Riveting.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times In 1886 a shy, middle-aged piano tuner named Edgar Drake receives an unusual commission from the British War Office: to travel to the remote jungles of northeast Burma and there repair a rare piano belonging to an eccentric army surgeon who has proven mysteriously indispensable to the imperial design. From this irresistible beginning, The Piano Tuner launches readers into a world of seductive, vibrantly rendered characters, and enmeshes them in an unbreakable spell of storytelling.
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The Mutiny
by Julian Rathbone
Azimullah Khan has elicited support for his patron the Nana Sahib's claim to be restored as the Peshwar of the Maharatha Confederacy. Recruited by the British government to spy on him, Charlie Bosham never lets loyalty get between himself and his own welfare, and he is soon involved in the Nana's plot to recover his inheritance.
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Breaking the Tongue
by Vyvyane Loh
"Dramatic....One of the most ambitious and accomplished debut novels in recent memory."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review.
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Bridge of a Hundred Dragons
by Emma Drummond
Amid the horror and devastation of the Chinese Civil War, Mark Rawlins is sent to the misty, evil country of Lu-Seng in order to rebuild a bridge in the face of the advancing Chinese army. And while he is determined to survive and return to Hong Kong, Alexandra has decided that she will have him.
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A Passage to India
by Edward Morgan Forster
Adela Quested arrives in Chandrapore, prepared to meet and marry a city magistrate who exemplifies the narrow-minded, anti-Indian prejudices of the imperial bureaucracy, but an expedition, led by the charming Dr Aziz, ends in an incident which quickens the pulse of Anglo-Indian mistrust.
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Heat and Dust
by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
The Booker Prize–winning novel—intertwining the narratives of two women, past and present, and their relationships to India—from the novelist, short story writer, and two–time Academy Award–winning screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala Partly set in colonial India during the 1920s, Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia, a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence, Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab, a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship, and soon begins to spend most of her days in his company. But then she becomes pregnant, and unsure of the child's paternity, she is faced with a wrenching dilemma. Her reaction to the crisis humiliates her husband and outrages the British community, breeding a scandal that lives in collective memory long after her death.
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The Raj Quartet, Volume 1
by Paul Scott
In August of 1942, a young Englishwoman is raped in an Indian garden, and her fate and that of an elderly English school teacher entwine.
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Bhowani Junction
by John Masters
First published in 1954 in the wake of the partition of India, John Masters' great novel Bhowani Junction has increased in stature over the years. Standing between E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and the acclaimed works of later writers such as Paul Scott and Salman Rushdie, Bhowani Junction is both a richly intriguing novel and a superb evocation of the tensions and conflicts at the birth of modern India.It is one of John Masters' seven novels which followed several generations of the Savage family serving in the British Army in India.Bhowani Junction is set in the wake of the partition of India, as the British prepare to withdraw from the newly independent country. Evoking the tensions and conflicts that accompanied the birth of modern India, the characters struggle to find their place in the new India that is emerging. In the last hectic days of the British Raj, Victoria has to choose between marrying a British Army officer or a Sikh, Ranjit, as she struggles to find her place in the new, independent India.It is Masters' most famous novel, and was made into a film in 1956, starring Ava Gardener and Stewart Granger.John Masters evokes the tensions and conflicts that accompanied the birth of modern India in his classic novel Bhowani Junction. Set in the late 1940's in the wake of partition it has become one of the great novels of India, alongside E.M. Forster's A Passage to India and the work of Paul Scott and Salman Rushdie. In the last hectic days of the British Raj, as the British prepare to withdraw from India, Victoria has to choose between marrying a British Army officer or a Sikh, Ranjit, as she struggles to find her place in the new India that is emerging.
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Love Besieged
by Charles E. Pearce
A Heady Mix Of Adventure And Romance Set Within The Walls Of The Besieged City Of Lucknow In 1857, This New Edition Of Charles E. Pearce`S Love Besieged (1909) Typifies The Genre Of The Mutiny Novel.
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Sharpe's Tiger
by Bernard Cornwell
"It was a bloody awful shot," Sharpe said. "My mother could lay a gun better than that." "I didn't think you had a mother," Private Garrard said. "Everyone's got a mother, Tom." "Not Sergeant Hakeswill," Garrard said, then spat a mix of dust and spittle. . . . "Hakeswill was spawned of the devil." Richard Sharpe—Soldier, hero, rogue—the man you always want on your side. Born in poverty, he joined the army to escape jail and climbed the ranks by sheer brutal courage. He knows no other family than the regiment of the 95th Rifles, whose green jacket he proudly wears.
