Customer Reviews

Two Under the Indian Sun

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I loved this book. Its written from the memories of the authors childhoods. Moving with their parents, aunt and younger sibling they tell of the experince of growing up in India during the 1910`s. It is written as a novel, but with a childlike understanding. In the preface the authors explain its written from their memories as children and therefore their understanding and interputation is as it was from young eyes and minds, but i think this makes it more interesting to read, since children can be very perceptive, but also lacking in knowledge. There is love and hate, life and death. Cultural diffrences and tradition. The area they lived in is now another country. The two sisters tell an interesting story that you may not hear often for the time it was written about.

Having visited India and Bangladesh myself I found the book familiar and had no problems understanding it. I lent the book to a friend who did`nt understand all of it as easy, I think perhaps this was because of the cultural and religious issues and occasional 'indian' words used without explaination of meanings. Dont let that put you off though, it dosent happen much.

This is a wonderful book, a "keeper". A true pleasure to read, suitable for any age and gender, the reader is embraced as a member of the Godden family, traveling with them by foot or on horseback, by cart or carriage, on rowboats, steamships, and by sail to and through India (including what is now Pakistan)in the early years of the twentieth century. The authors, two pre-teen sisters, join other members of their family as they live, love, learn, celebrate, suffer and mature among the cultures of this part of the British Empire nearly a hundred years ago, where their father is resident agent of one of the great trading companies of the era. The reader becomes an eager, wide-eyed learner and active participant, an adventurer in the many facets of the differing cultures, religions, castes, customs, emotions, dietary practices, disciplines and justice, how they interact (or do not) with each other and with the British masters. The reader is led not to judge, but to learn, and departs eager to learn more of how these regions, cultures, religions, and castes evolved into what they are today, wanting to know more, to meet again if possible and reminisce with Jon and Rumer, as at a family reunion. Two Under the Indian Sun is what a book should be.

In the late 1960s my family visited India for 6 weeks. I was 11 years old and it was my first trip to a country where poverty was (then) so widely visible. One of my mother's friends had been to India many times and she gave me this book to read as a preparation for the trip. It was a stroke of brilliance.

Jon and Rumer Godden spent most of their childhood in Narayangunj, in what is now Pakistan, where their English father was a steamer agent in the early 1900s. "Two Under the Indian Sun" is an honest memoir of expatriate life in early 20th century India. It doesn't pretend to be comprehensive, but it's amazing what children see and understand, and how the perspective of childhood can compensate for the perspective of privilege. The Goddens sisters love India passionately, and it shows in this book. They don't hesitate to talk about poverty, cruelty, death, corruption - but also the beauty, compassion, and resilience of the place they thought of as home, even long after they returned to England. Seeing India through their eyes enabled me to love it too.