The Far Pavilions (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: bridal camp, durbar tent, kikar trees, Koda Dad, Biju Ram, Gul Baz (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Rich in adventure, heroism, cruetly and love." --Publishers Weekly

"A high-adventure love story told without ever a dull moment in the old tratition of the great storytellers of the too distant past." --Book Review

"One of the true big ones."-- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A great romantic adventure novel. She is a born storyteller." --Paul Scott, author of The Raj Quartet
-- Review

Review

"Rich in adventure, heroism, cruetly and love." --Publishers Weekly

"A high-adventure love story told without ever a dull moment in the old tratition of the great storytellers of the too distant past." --Book Review

"One of the true big ones."-- Cleveland Plain Dealer

"A great romantic adventure novel. She is a born storyteller." --Paul Scott, author of The Raj Quartet

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 960 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (January 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031215125X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312151256
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #14,518 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best epic novel ever, December 17, 2000

By	A. Woodley "Patroness, Janeites, the Austen list" (New Zealand) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book is at once a sweeping romance, a gripping adventure story, and a tale about identity and belonging. I just love it, and re-read it regularly. M M Kaye is simply the most marvellous story teller, and her descriptions of India are breath-taking too.

It is the story of Ashton/Ashok - an English boy brought up by a peripatetic father in the foothills of the Himalayas - he is about 6 years old when cholera strikes the camp and kills everyone but himself and his nurse. She takes him down into India to give him back to the safety of the English - but this is 1857 and India is in mutiny against the English. Ash, having been brought up amongst Indians can speak their languages fluently, and he is the right colouring to pass as one of the races from the North where they are paler. So his nurse escapes from the troubles with him and brings him up as her own son. This sets the stage for many of his later problems, the key one being that of his identity - for when he must later seek safety with the English and his true birth is revealed he finds it difficult to know who he truly is for he is at once Indian and English. While a boy Ash meets Anjuli, a princess in the court where he is working. She is the daughter of an Indian/Russian mother - and because of her birth, and her mother's death in the court, she is also never really properly accepted.

MM Kaye sets this story against the grand displays of Indian courts, the British army (which Ashton later joins to return to India), teeming bazaars, and the different cultures and religions of India.

Its an enormous book to get through but it is well worth pretty much every page. I've never been one for long descriptions of war, and the scenes of the siege in Afghanistan towards the end I always find a bit of a trial. That is really such a small piece of the whole novel for most of it Ash and later Anjuli too, try to work out who they are and how they fit into India, or perhaps England. Their relationships and identities are tested against their friends who enter their lives and for various reasons leave them again. It is at once incredibly tragic and wonderfully romantic. I fell in love with India the first time I read this book and subsequent readings haven't changed my opinion.

MM Kaye wrote two other real epics. Shadow of the Moon which I also really love, although it is a bit more romantic than this one - and Trade Winds which is set in Zanzibar as I remember - but the heroine in that just doesn't gel for me. The Far Pavillions is simply the best epic novel ever written (I think)

40 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Sweeping Tapestry, March 26, 2002

By	wysewomon "wysewomon" (Paonia, CO United States) - See all my reviews

_The Far Pavilions_ is a sweeping tapestry of a novel encompassing numerous characters and situations set against the cultural clash of British India. The clash of cultures is embodied in the main character, Ashton Pelham-Martyn. Born in India and raised by a Hindu woman after the death of his parents, he later learns that he is actually English. He's sent to his father's family in England to be brought up "properly" and returns to India as an officer in the military, but soon discovers that his early experiences have made it impossible for him to be truly English, just as his English training has made it impossible for him to be truly anything else. Along the way he meets and falls in love with the half-caste Hindu princess, Anjuli, another whose mixed birth causes her much tribulation and pain in a land rife with bigotry from all sides and built on traditions that make it all but impossible for people of different cultures to meet and accept one another in purely human terms.

M. M Kaye does a magnificent job depicting the various cultures and systems of thought prevalent in India and the surrounding areas at the time. For the most part she does so without giving any value judgement, but she is not timid about pointing out that every culture has its fanatics and that these can cause many problems for the bulk of the population who just want to live their lives in peace. She also excellently conveys the inherent sadness of a situation where caste laws and religious differences come between people who otherwise love one another. By placing her protagonist squarely between two dominant cultures, she illustrates the loneliness of a person who cannot see things in terms of black or white, or adhere to an ill-advised policy merely because it is advanced by people of the same race and beliefs.

_The Far Pavilions_ is really two books in one. First it is the story of Ash and Juli; second it is the story of British military policy in India and Afghanistan, culminating in the Second Afghan War and the disastrous attempt to establish a British Mission in Kabul. Where the book fell flat for me was in the last two or three hundred pages, where the second story took so much precedence over the first that it seemed to belong in another novel all together and the main characters were virtually lost in the uproar. While the events in Afghanistan were necessary to Ash's making his ultimate decision about how he wanted to live his life and thus had to be presented in some detail, I still experienced the whole section as something of a let down. For me, it was not as gripping as earlier parts of the book, despite the events. I also found the ending itself a little disappointing; I would have liked it to have gone farther, as it seemed to me that Ash and Juli's story was just left dangling.

This is not a "Happy-Ever-After" kind of story, so if that's what you're looking for you might be disappointed. It is, however, a marvelous depiction of a fascinating piece of history. If you like historical novels, you can't do much better.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars carves itself into your heart, November 6, 2001

By A Customer

This is without doubt one of the best books I have ever read... and judging by the other reviews I'm not the first to feel this way. I was completeoy transported to the time and place of the story, I fell in love wioth Ash, I lived though all Anjuli's agonies. It's one of those books that live forever in your heart. The characters simply walk off the page and into your life, and when its over you grieve for them. I have read it three times. Generally I love books set in India and read them all, but they are of variable quality. Kaye's "Shadow of the Moon" is almost, but not quite, as good. Another novel with "Far Pavillions" effect is "Of Marriageable Age" by Sharon Maas, a love story to die for!