Customer Reviews

The Raj Quartet: The Jewel in the Crown/the Day of the Scorpion/the Towers of Silence/a Division of the Spoils

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The Raj Quartet (comprised of four novels) is in my ultimate top ten of great novels and my favourite work of fiction for the twentieth century. Paul Scott is up there up with Tolstoy and Jane Austen. The Raj Quartet is exquisite to read, every word and every sentence appears to have the perfection that Jane Austen bestowed on her works but on the majestic scale of Tolstoy's War and Peace.

The Raj Quartet is multi-layered, complex, beyond the apparent. Is it about a country? Or is it about two countries? Paul Scott deals with the years of the "great divorce" as it were, but now at the beginning of a new century the continuing implications of the historic British occupation are as fresh as ever, both in India and the UK, one example being the the unforseen post war immigration and lifting of racial barriers between two peoples (I myself am a product of a post war marriage between an Indian father and British mother).

The question of identity is explored. What makes an Indian? (still a relevant question in a subcontinent of such diverse cultures, religions, languages, outlooks, etc). What happens to a group (the Raj British) who are no longer needed in either India or Britain? (I recommend Staying On by Paul Scott which deals with a minor character who does stay on in India.)

Beyond the themes of history, colonialism and imperialism, there is the theme of the universal human experience. Who are we all really? Should we let our nationality and culture define who we are? Or as one character, Sarah Layton, finally have the courage to break free and define our own identity. Sarah at first is apart from "the other", then in one revealing scene (the ride with Ahmed) she subconsciously turns to face "the other" though unsuccessfully and finally in the beautifully written and incredibly sensual scene where she decides to dive into the forbidden (the seduction by Clark, who I see myself as Eros or the Hindu God of Love, Kama) she breaks through into her individuality, her "grace".

About 25 years ago I got a list of the best 100 books of all time, and found "The Raj Quartet" by Paul Scott listed. I started at the beginning with "The Jewel in the Crown" and got bogged down. Coincidentally, PBS started its Masterpiece Theatre version. I watched a few of the episodes (actually all of them, eventually) and got back to reading. What I discovered was the best set of novels I've ever read, and each one an individual "jewel" as well. A pebble thrown, the towers of silence, and many other images stay with me, as well as the memory of Scott's beautiful writing and well-developed, complex characters, and the scope and importance of the story. If there wasn't so much else to read, I'd reread the whole set--sounds like a good retirement project some day.

"The Jewel in the Crown" (1966), "The Day of the Scorpion" (1968), "The Towers of Silence" (1971) and "A Division of the Spoils" (1975). These novels are interwoven narratives, set in India during and immediately after World War 2. The story revolves round the alleged rape of a young Englishwoman, Daphne Manners and an English-reared, British public school-educated Indian named Hari Kumar who is accused of it. He is brutally interrogated by the district superintendent of police, Ronald Merrick. The consequences and reprecussions of the affair examine the political, class, personal, racial and religious conflicts within both British and Indian communities during the period leading up to Independence and Partition in 1947. The story covers a vast panoramic canvas telling the tale through the princpal characters as well as the minor characters Lady Chatterjee, friend of Lady Manners, Daphne's aunt, Barbara Batchelor a missionary school teacher who dies insane, Miss Crane also a missionary who burns herself to death after her Indian colleague, Mr Chaudhuri is killed. The heavy drinking Mildred Layton, wife of Colonel Layton who is a Prisoner of War. Their daughters, Sarah Layton the sensible one who becomes the lover of Guy Perron, a Cambridge educated NCO in the British Army intelligence corps. Susan Layton a vain and feckless woman who marries Merick after he attempts to saves her first husband (Teddie Bingham)from a blazing vehicle in Burma. Mohammed Ali Kasim a muslim leader, imprisoned by the British, his son Ahmed, one of the first vicitims of the massacres attending Partition. Count Bronowsky a Russian emigre and adviser to the Nawab of Mirat. The saga gives a remarkable insight into the social and political machination of end of empire and is recommended to anyone who wishes to understand the last days of British India.

It has been too long since I read this book [probably 15 years ago] for me to offer an erudite and detailed analysis. But I do remember vividly that when I read it that the word "masterpiece" came repeatedly to my mind. In a league with Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" and Naipaul's "A House for Mr. Biswas". Find the time to read it; you won't regret it.

Paul Scott's brilliant saga of the death of English imperialism resonates deeply for any American who has ever worried that Britain's shrunken global influence foreshadows our own destiny as a nation -- despite our current standing as the world's only "superpower." His indictment of racism is complicated and unsparing. In addition to his marvelous villain, Ronald Merrick, his female characters are so richly drawn, so simultaneously appalling, frustrating, and likable, that they dominate all four books of the Quartet and make it difficult to believe they were written by a man. The very appealing character of Guy Perron, whom the reader first meets in Volume IV, is, I believe, Scott himself -- serving as an academic observer who attempts to translate, and make sense of, the complex, emotional, and tightly interwoven events through which the first three volumes have carried us.

I reread the Quartet frequently and get something new out of it every time. It inspires me to write.

An outstanding piece of writing and a masterpiece, the Quartet compresses in four novels the essence of individual lives caught in the matrix of history. What is karma and dharma? The novels examine these as best Scott can in trying to articulate his artistic vision of the tragedy of history and of individual lives. History is impersonal and is from a God's-eye view, our own lives are subjective and given differing perspectives and are all that we have to imperfectly cling to. In that personal vantage point is salvation and hell all in one. Check out Scott's "Staying On" as well which is his farewell to the Indian scene and the characters we've come to know. A sliding farewell into oblivion, just as Scott himself fell into his twilight years.

This book (or series of books) is so sprawling and intricate, like India itself, one might say, that it is impossible to "pin down", as it were, in a review like this. The thing to do, I think, is to cover the most salient aspects of the work separately. Otherwise, one will become lost, as many of the characters herein do. So, salient aspect numbers:

1.) History - This is the novelistic equivalent of Gibbon concerning the British Empire. It might even be called "The Decline and Fall of The British Empire." As a reviewer for the Sunday Times puts it, "A history student years from now should be able to say to his professor, `Yes, but what was it REALLY like in India in the last days of the Raj?' and be told, `Read these four books and you'll not only know, you'll understand...' " The "understand" part is especially significant in that these books will have you totally spellbound by Scott's deft character portrayal and psychological insight. It is no exaggeration to say that one feels one has lived in India from 1939-1947 after having emerged from the nearly two-thousand pages that comprise this work. But the deft character portrayal leads me to a more troublesome, salient point:

2.) Ronald Merrick-A host of characters populate this work, portrayed with deep sympathy herein. And yet, one can't help but feel, upon closing the pages, that the work might also be called, "Ronald Merrick: An in-depth Portrait of a Psychotic in India". It is a tribute to Paul Scott that we do not discover the depths of the....evil (Sorry, I can't think of another word that fully encompasses the character.) of Merrick until the tag end of the work. Yes, Hari Kumar is the other major character who, to a certain extent, offsets Merrick. But he fades into the background after his interrogation by Nigel Rowan with Lady Manners looking on in the second book, The Day of the Scorpion. Merrick, so to speak, stays on until the very bitter end. Not only does he stay on, but he lingers in the mind. What is he? What does he represent? The British Raj itself, as some would have it? Partly, I would say, but there is something about Scott's obsession with this fellow that refuses to be pigeonholed. It's all very eerie. By the end of the book, you won't be able to hear the word "Merrick" without a troubling frisson running through you. - He is not mad like, say, Susan Layton, who rather resembles a character from one of the Bronte novels. - His nature and the nature of his evil are complex. They defy reduction. So, I shan't venture on a futile quest to do so but rather come to salient point:

3.) The brooding fatalism that overhangs everything here. Of course, one knows before one picks the book up that the Brits in India are doomed. But, well, I'll just let Daphne Manners' quote from the first book, The Jewel in the Crown, give the reader notice of the feeling that permeates this work:

"We were sitting on the verandah. Oh, everything was there - the wicker chairs, the table with the tea tray on it, the scent of the flowers, the scent of India, the air of certainty, of perpetuity; but, as well, the odd sense of none of it happening at all because it had begun wrong and continued wrong, and so was already ended, and was wrong even in its ending, because its ending, for me, was unreal and remote, and yet total in its envelopment, as if it had already turned itself into a beginning. Such constant hope we suffer from!"

Salient points covered...except that the reader might do worse than to do as Perron does at the end and look up Philoctetes, not a futile quest by any means.

Beautifully written in a subtle and very rich english. The characters are depicted with deep psychological insight and with the tenderness that excellent writers are able to show in describing (and making alive) their creatures.

My yardstick for excellent writing about a foreign culture is probably Paul Scott's "The Raj Quartet", which was the basis for the BBC TV series "The Jewel in the Crown". I think these four books are a real tour de force - he writes in several different voices throughout, but remains - I think - completely sensitive to the political and social complexities and subtleties of the situation in India towards the end of the British occupation. Very nuanced, extraordinarily sensitive writing.

It's not just the writing: the stories that unfold in this masterpiece will draw you in, grip you, and break your heart.

Paul Scott's following is small, but Loyal. He is a fantastic writer. The Raj Quartet by far, is my favourite favourite series of books by him because of its complexity and such extraordinary characters. His charactres are so indepth, so well played out that the reader feels that he or she knows them thouroughly. Its a historical epic, very well written, and its absolutely a must read.