The Far Pavilions [Paperback]

M. M. Kaye (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1997

When The Far Pavilions was first published nineteen years ago, it moved the critic Edmund Fuller to write this: "Were Miss Kaye to produce no other book, The Far Pavilions might stand as a lasting accomplishment in a single work comparable to Margaret Mitchell's achievement in Gond With the Wind."

From its beginning in the foothills of the towering Himalayas, M.M. Kaye's masterwork is a vast, rich and vibrant tapestry of love and war that ranks with the greatest panoramic sagas of modern fiction.

The Far Pavilions is itself a Himalayan achievement, a book we hate to see come to an end. it is a passionate, triumphant story that excites us, fills us with joy, move us to tears, satisfies us deeply, and helps us remember just what it is we want most from a novel.

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

About the Author

M.M. Kaye was born and raised in India. She was seventy years old when this book was published and made her famous the world over. She lives in Sussex, England.

Product Details

• Paperback: 960 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; Reprint edition (January 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031215125X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312151256
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (125 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #56,544 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

141 of 141 people found the following review helpful

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

By A. Woodley

Format:Paperback

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)

59 of 61 people found the following review helpful

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

By wysewomon

Format:Paperback

_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.

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A boy with no home , a princess, evil stepmothers, war, forbidden love and exploration of Indian culture, this book has it all October 25, 2007

By Lilly Flora VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a book that I have been recommended countless times and always declined reading. I can no longer really remember why, except that the first page always seemed a stiff and confusing. But this year, upon seeing the number of pages the book was (1200 pages in mass market paperback) and being recommended it one more time I decided to give it a shot.

All I can say is wow! This is one of those historical epics that ranks right up there with Gone With the Wind in terms of scope, romance, and underlying issues. It's just an amazing novel.

This is the story of Ashton, who is raised from birth by a Hindu foster mother while his father treks around Indian on linguistic missions. When his father dies and the sephoy mutiny happens, his foster mother Sita (a women with real courage) discuses the already dark skinned Ash as her own son and takes him to a remote state where the violence against the British has yet to spread. Here he becomes the servant/playmate of the heir to the throne and the boy's half-sister, Juli. But the heir is in danger from his wicked stepmother who wants him dead so her own son will be heir and when Ash prevents this one to many times he and Sita must flee for their lives. It is then that Sita revels Ash is really British and sends him off to find his own "people."

Of course later Ash will find Juli again-when he is assigned to escort her and thousands of others to her wedding in a far away state. You can guess what kind of turmoil this turns up.

While a great deal of this book is a romance, an adventure, a war story and a exploration of a culture, it is also about the search for identity for poor Ash, who is really neither British no Indian but "two men in one skin-which is an uncomfortable thing to be."

There's also fantastic (and quite sensitive towards Indian considering it was written by a Brit) descriptions of the imperialism of the British and the stupidly of them in some situations (like the Afghan wars.) and a truly touching sentiment about finding a place in the world free or prejudice or danger where you can just be whatever you turn out to be.

Anyway, this is an amazing book. The absolute only thing I didn't love was the ending, which seemed a little out of place with the main plot, but the last few pages tied it back in and then it was just perfect.

Five stars. I should have read this long ago, and look forward to reading others by the author.