The Pearls of Coromandel (Hardcover)

by Keron Bhattacharya (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The author of business manuals published in England, Bhattacharya makes his fiction debut with a thoughtful and disturbing tale set in India during the decline of the British Raj. John Sugden is a young, idealistic British civil service officer sent to a remote province to act as a district magistrate. At first, Sugden is enchanted by this new land and people, but soon loneliness and lassitude set in. Trips to the nearest town are difficult due to distance and the rising tensions between Muslims and Hindus. Gandhi and Jinnah are both gaining influence within the deeply riven population, while the British are struggling to retain power. Sugden tries to walk a delicate line between the opposing factions, but when he marries Kemala, a Hindu woman whose rape by Muslims has made her a pariah, he violates social and religious traditions. His career is ruined, and he is used as a political scapegoat by both religious factions and by the British, who do not allow mixed-race marriages. Yet he and Kamala seem bound for happiness, until a final irony brings a tragic denouement. While Bhattacharya's prose is merely serviceable and the novel's climax soap-operatic, the author evokes clearly the delicate social, religious and political issues at stake. His background detailing gives density to an intelligent story whose characters play out their fates while buffeted by the winds of change.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
A moving and refreshingly intelligent story of love across the racial divide in the dying days of the Raj, from first-novelist Bhattacharya, Indian-born but living in Britain. Told by David Sugden, returning to India in the middle of WW II to avenge his father, the tale begins in the 1920s when John Sugden, an Oxford graduate, comes to India to take up a position with the Indian Civil Service. John, the son of Quakers, is an idealist who hopes to use his intellectual gifts for the benefit of both Britain and India. But the times are turbulent: Gandhi, though preaching nonviolence, is provoking riots and a harsh British response; Jinnah is rallying the Muslims around him; Hindu nationalists are being equally aggressive; and the British are trying to hang on, though they acknowledge that change is needed. Sripore, the town that Sugden is sent to administer, is a microcosm of these tensions, exacerbated by the rape by Muslims of Kamala, the daughter of Sugden's Hindu assistant. Kamala, beautiful and intelligent, is married, but after the rape her husband and her family reject her as tainted. Sugden takes her in, angering all parties, including his British superiors, and then the two fall deeply in love and live openly together. Hindus do not permit divorce, the British do not allow mixed marriages, and Sugden, accused by Kamala's father of organizing her rape so that he can live with her, is put on trial. Though exonerated, he is dismissed from his job and, with the pregnant Kamala, escapes to French Pondicherry, where the two marry and their son David is born. But this is not a happy-ever-after story. More tragedy is in store for Sugden, ``humiliated by both the Raj and the Indians.'' Earnest and at times lapsing into clich‚, but the lucidly detailed history and the unusual lovers, remarkable both for their smarts and their virtues, make for an accomplished debut. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

• Hardcover: 254 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press (June 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312143893
• ISBN-13: 978-0312143893
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
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• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #3,169,019 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)
  
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• In-Print Editions: Hardcover (Large Print) |  All Editions