A Division of Spoils (Repr of 1975 Ed) (Raj Quartet/Paul Scott, 4) (Phoenix Fiction) [Paperback]

Paul Scott (Author)

Book Description

Series: Phoenix Fiction | Publication Date: May 22, 1998

After exploiting India's divisions for years, the British depart in such haste that no one is prepared for the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1947. The twilight of the raj turns bloody. Against the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, A Division of the Spoils illuminates one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Fourth and final volume in Scott's majestic "Raj Quartet" dealing with the declining years of the "British presence" in India - here in 1945-47 hurriedly and expediently dissipating. For the most part the observer is Sgt. Perron, an upper-class English historian whose lightly cynical insistence on rank permits him a cover of flexibility. It is Perron who temporarily prevents the suicide of a shattered countryman who enunciates a truth, later to be fleshed out: that Britain's "moral obligation" to Victoria's Jewel in the Crown was in reality an obligation to property - a concept no longer viable. We meet again the Layton family, other English diplomats and military career men, and a number of Indian politicians - primarily the scrupulous Kasim. Beyond Gandhi-Nehru-Jinnah Indian nationalism, Kasim takes the long, essentially anachronistic, view that the law and its contracts must be honored. However, it is the young British-educated Indian, Kumar, and the British police officer, Merrick (Merrick's outrages against Kumar's soul and person were explored in The Day of the Scorpion [1968])who symbolize the corrupt illusions on which power feeds. In England, Kumar was a British-style monument to virtue (a brown-skinned gentleman on the cricket field); while lower middle-class Merrick was invisible. But back in India, Kumar is an alien. Merrick, hiding his racial hatreds, his homosexual tendencies and his insecurities even from himself, is also a victim of the well-born Britons who never cared about Empire and to whom "God-the-Father-God-the-raj was a lot of insular middle- and lower-class shit." Again Scott marks the "nuances of time and history flowing softly." The way he portrays the stooped shoulders of a bush-shirt hanging on a chair is as eloquent an expression of the "grand irrelevance of history to the things people wanted for themselves" as any political pronouncement or act of violence. The "Raj Quartet" is a commanding achievement. (Kirkus Reviews)

About the Author

Paul Scott (1920-78), born in London, held a commission in the Indian army during World War II. His many novels include Johnnie Sabib, The Chinese Love Pavilion, and Staying On.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (May 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226743446
• ISBN-13: 978-0226743448
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #526,157 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coming full circle....., May 5, 2001

By 

Dianne Foster "Di" (USA) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: A Division of Spoils (Repr of 1975 Ed) (Raj Quartet/Paul Scott, 4) (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)

A DIVISION OF THE SPOILS by Paul Scott is the last book in his series known as the Raj Quartet. The four books are classics, that have been read and will continue to be read centuries from now as readers attempt to understand what happened during the last days of the British Raj in India. I read history but I am also a great fan of well written historical fiction and these books are extremely well written historical fiction. Having read them, I am much more enlightened about the struggles which continue today betweem Hindu and Muslim.

Many of the characters from the earlier books converge in DIVISION, and the book introduces a new character, Guy Perron, who is a Chillingborough-Cambridge educated historian whose "period" and place are mid-19th Century India. Guy's character is used to tie up all the loose ends.

After arriving in India as a British army sergeant (he has elected not become an officer although his education and class clearly warrent it), Guy has the misfortune to be "chosen" by the recently-promoted-to-LtCol. and very wicked Ronald Merrick as his aide-de-camp. Merrick is still riddled with class envy, and sees in Guy an excellent opportunity to abuse someone he despises. Fortunately, Guy is able to escape from Merrick through the graces of his Aunt Charlotte who pulls strings to have him released from the army.

Fortunately for Guy, he doesn't escape Merrick before he meets Sarah Layton. Their story is told in this fourth volume and certain elements of the tale bring to mind the earlier story of Hari Kumar and Daphne Manners. In fact, it is through Guy's meeting of Merrick, Sarah, and another Chillingburrian, Nigel Rowan (who interviewed Hari Kumar in prison) that he becomes interested in the events at Mayapore in 1942 and the subsequent consequences for all involved.

As with other great classics, in DIVISION things do not always evolve as the reader would have wished. This book is very realistic -- sorrow and joy are mixed. In JEWEL IN THE CROWN, the first book in the series, Lady Chatterjee says she does not want to go to a heaven that excludes joy and sorrow because being human requires one to feel joy and sorrow.

Perhaps it is because humans can experience sorrow they are capable of experiencing joy. In the end, the reader discovers Hari Kumar's fate and the identity of Philoctetes as well as the difference between Dharma and Karma. This is a powerful series and a fabulous ending to the tale.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Tour de Force, June 29, 2002

By 

Penner (Brattleboro, VT USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Division of Spoils (Repr of 1975 Ed) (Raj Quartet/Paul Scott, 4) (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)

The four volumes of the Raj Quartet overlap and complement one another, while at the same time forwarding the main storyline of the slow twilight of the British ascendancy in India, always with the rape of a white girl by Indian men as the central lodestone everpresent in the background, the nightmare which is seldom mentioned but which none can drive from their minds. Events occur, are discussed, witnessed as newspaper reports, court documents, interviews, vague recollections from years later, or perceived directly by the main characters. Then the next volume will take two or three steps back into previous events, and these same events will be perceived from another angle, perhaps only as a vague report heard far away across the Indian plain, or witnessed directly by another character, or discussed in detail long after their occurrence over drinks on a verandah. This may at times seem like rehashing, indeed as one reads the four volumes one will be subjected to the account of the rape in the Bibighar Gardens many times over; but what will also become apparent is that additional details, sometimes minor variations in interpretation and sometimes crucial facts, are being added slowly to the events discussed, as though the window to the past were being progressively wiped cleaner and cleaner with successive strokes of Scott's pen. In this way he draws the picture of the last days of the Raj not in a conventional linear fashion, but recursively, and from multiple angles. One gets the clear impression of life in India during the first half of the 20th century as similar in nature: Fragmented, multifaceted, largely dependent upon perspective and experience and never perceived whole or all at once.

Book 4 is the tour-de-force of the series, the longest and the one that covers the greatest distance, emotionally and chronologically. Into the Laytons' social set come Nigel Rowan, an officer in the political branch whom we have met before in Book 2 interrogating Hari Kumar some years after his imprisonment, and Guy Perron, a sergeant in the intelligence service who is "chosen" against his will by Ronald Merrick to serve in his unit. Merrick seems deliberately to surround himself with people who dislike him: Guy Perron, Sarah Layton, and before them Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. Rowan and Perron, incidentally, are former schoolmates of Kumar's at the posh Chillingborough Academy in England. And they're not the only ones: The British in India seem constantly reminded that Kumar symbolizes the insoluble problem of India's Britishness. He's too British for the Indians and too Indian for the British. Perron is an excellent guide through the final days of the Raj, stolid and proper yet inwardly seething with intellectual outrage. An explosive yet sombre climax in 1947 details the very end of the British presence in India, the beginnings of the Hindu-Muslim riots throughout the country, and gives an expansive sense of just how far one has come from the small town of Mayapore and the darkly deserted Bibighar Gardens.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Impressive last volume, August 13, 2000

By 

Andreas Kloevekorn (Hamburg Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Division of Spoils (Repr of 1975 Ed) (Raj Quartet/Paul Scott, 4) (Phoenix Fiction) (Paperback)

This book is just as impressive as the three others of the Raj Quartet. Once again, the cast of interesting characters is huge; the atmosphere of the time is brilliantly captured and the variety of scenes/plots is well mastered. The book is instructive and yet enormously entertaining. The Raj Quartet is one of the most rewarding pieces of literature I have ever read.