Paul Scott

The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott's epic study of British India in its final years, has no equal. Tolstoyan in scope and Proustian in detail but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain.The first novel, The Jewel in the Crown, describes the doomed love between an English girl and an Indian boy, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. This affair touches the lives of other characters in three subsequent volumes, most of them unknown to Hari and Daphne but involved in the larger social and political conflicts which destroy the lovers. In The Day of the Scorpion, Ronald Merrick, a sadistic policeman who arrested and prosecuted Hari, insinuates himself into an aristocratic British family as World War II escalates.On occasions unsparing in its study of personal dramas and racial differences, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane, not least in the author’s capacity to identify with a huge range of characters. It is also illuminated by delicate social comedy and wonderful evocations of the Indian scene, all narrated in luminous prose.The other two novels in the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, are also available from Everyman’s Library. With a new introduction by Hilary Spurling(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

No set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under British rule--"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"--as Paul Scott's historical tour de force, "The Raj Quartet." The Jewel in the Crown opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for independence.

Tusker and Lucy Smalley stayed on in India. Given the chance to return 'home' when Tusker, once a Colonel in the British Army, retired, they chose instead to remain in the small hill town of Pankot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their landlady, the imposing Mrs. Bhoolabhoy, threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days.Both funny and deeply moving, Staying On is a unique, engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and of a forty-year love affair.

In The Day of the Scorpion, Scott draws us deeper in to his epic of India at the close of World War II. With force and subtlety, he recreates both private ambition and perversity, and the politics of an entire subcontinent at a turning point in history. As the scorpion, encircled by a ring of fire, will sting itself to death, so does the British raj hasten its own destruction when threatened by the flames of Indian independence. Brutal repression and imprisonment of India's leaders cannot still the cry for home rule. And in the midst of chaos, the English Laytons withdraw from a world they no longer know to seek solace in denial, drink, and madness.

India, 1943: In a regimental hill station, the ladies of Pankot struggle to preserve the genteel façade of British society amid the debris of a vanishing empire and World War II. A retired missionary, Barbara Batchelor, bears witness to the connections between many human dramas; the love between Daphne Manner and Hari Kumar; the desperate grief an old teacher feels for an India she cannot rescue; and the cruelty of Captain Ronald Merrick.

After exploiting India's divisions for years, the British depart in such haste that no one is prepared for the Hindu-Muslim riots of 1947. The twilight of the raj turns bloody. Against the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, A Division of the Spoils illuminates one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India.

Four novels covering the period between the Quit India riots of 1942 and the massacres that accompanied independence and partition in 1947 provide insight into the closing years of British rule in India

The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott's epic study of British India in its final years, has no equal. Tolstoyan in scope and Proustian in detail but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain.In The Towers of Silence, Barbie Batchelor, a British missionary and schoolteacher, befriends a British family and witnesses the trial of Hari Kumar, an Indian man accused of assaulting his beloved Daphne Manners, while observing the dangerously cruel Captain Ronald Merrick, Hari’s nemesis. In A Division of the Spoils, the chaos of the departure of the British and the fervor of Partition wreaks havoc upon the twilight of the Raj — and the end of a era.On occasions unsparing in its study of personal dramas and racial differences, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane, not least in the author’s capacity to identify with a huge range of characters. It is also illuminated by delicate social comedy and wonderful evocations of the Indian scene, all narrated in luminous prose.The other two novels in the Raj Quartet, The Jewel in the Crown and The Day of the Scorpion, are also available from Everyman’s Library. With a new introduction by Hilary Spurling (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

In this swiftly paced and lyrical novel about British expatriates at the time of Indian independence, Paul Scott grapples with the themes of race, possession, and history that dominate all four novels of his masterpiece, The Raj Quartet, especially The Jewel in the Crown. As always, Scott fills his book with vivid characters: the seductive, bigoted war widow; the sophisticated, wily Hindu politician; and the athletic young American who only gradually begins to understand the legacy of pain and hatred veiling the woman he has come to rescue. Set against the backdrop of a nation in violent transition—a climate of exhilaration and shifting loyalties—Six Days in Marapore unfolds amidst the possibility of reconciliation, freedom, and healing."Scott's brief characterizations are as important to Six Days in Marapore as the basic plot . . . This is not primarily a novel of India, but rather more of frightened foreigners living there at the end of their era."—New York Times"Intense, abrasive, the many conflicts and telltale stigmata of Hindu and Moslem, white and off white, give this its uncertain temper and certain suspense."—Kirkus Reviews

The Love Pavilion follows a young British clerk, Tom Brent, who must track down a former friend—now suspected of murder—in Malaya. Tom faces great danger, both from the mysterious Malayan jungles and the political tensions between British officers, but the novel is perhaps most memorable for the strange, beautiful romance between Tom and a protean Eurasian beauty whom he meets in the eponymous Chinese Love Pavilion.

William Conway, half English and half Indian, reflects on his Indian childhood, education in England, and ordeal in a Japanese prison camp during World War II

Pan G296 2nd edition 1962 printing paperback, fine Burma In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

1964, American hardcover edition, Morrow, NY, 277-page early novel by the author.

By the same author as "The Raj Quartet", this novel is set during the dying days of British rule in India. It centres on Tom Gower and his wife Dorothy, who, unbeknown to him, is half Indian. The effects of this revelation on her husband and their friends form the basis of this novel.

Written by the author of "The Raj Quartet" and "Staying On" which won the Booker Prize, this is the story of a forgotten campaign during World War II and the early days of the air supply company, when they were flying drops from India to Orde Wingate's Chindits behind the Japanese lines in Burma.

During World War II Ian Canning returns to England from service in India and becomes disillusioned

Book by Scott, Paul

Part Two Of Two Parts August, 1942. The Japanese are marching on Burma. In India, Ghandi talks sedition. It's hot and nerves are raw. Then a gang of rioters rapes a young Englishwoman. Thus opens volume one of Paul Scott's acclaimed series The Raj Quartet. Scott pictures a number of memorable Britons and Indians caught at the end of an epoch, and shows us the effect it will have on them all. "I read all four books, one after another...in an undiminished hungry daze. Though I knew Scott was dead I had an impulse, as I shut the last volume, to write the man a letter...he had poured prodigious amounts of imagination, skill and wisdom into his work, but somehow I wanted him to give me more!" (The New Yorker)

A middle class man finds that his life has been ruined by the small size of his inheritance

Part One Of Two Parts August, 1942. The Japanese are marching on Burma. In India, Ghandi talks sedition. It is hot and nerves are raw. Then a gang of rioters rapes a young Englishwoman. Thus opens volume one of Paul Scott's acclaimed series The Raj Quartet. Scott pictures a number of memorable Britons and Indians caught at the end of an epoch, and shows us the effect it will have on them all. "I read all four books, one after another...in an undiminished hungry daze. Though I knew Scott was dead I had an impulse, as I shut the last volume, to write the man a letter...he had poured prodigious amounts of imagination, skill and wisdom into his work, but somehow I wanted him to give me more!" (The New Yorker)

If novelist Paul Mark Scott (1920-1978) has secured a niche in English literature, it is on the merits of his Raj Quartet and its sequel, Staying On, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1977. Yet by the time he had published The Jewel in the Crown in 1966, he had supported his family on his writing for six years, worked as a literary advisor for several publishers, routinely written book reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and Country Life, and published eight novels. Scott's literary reputation was already considerable when, at the age of 44, he embarked on The Raj Quartet that would take up the last fourteen years of his life-a masterpiece that reinterpreted the major events of his generation and challenged his contemporaries to face the legacy of their past. Beginning in 1964, Scott negotiated with the Harry Ransom Research Center at The University of Texas-Austin for the purchase of his manuscripts. Later, when he was teaching creative writing at the University of Tulsa in 1976, he arranged to sell his letters to the archives at McFarlin Library. Many years after his death, David Higham Associates (the literary agency for which Scott worked from 1950-1960 and which acted as Scott's own agent until his death in 1978) sold archival materials to the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin. Only a limited amount of material from McFarlin's Paul Scott Collection has been published to date. The David Higham Collection has not been systematically used until now. Together, the Tulsa and Austin Collections involve many thousands of Scott's professional and personal letters, to a large degree untapped by scholars of literature. In this two-volume collection, Janis Haswell makes available to the reading public for the first time several hundred letters from the Tulsa and Austin archives, as well as dozens of private letters to daughters Carol and Sally Scott. Scott's letters never disappoint. They are intriguing, well-penned and (in most cases) well-preserved in carbon form by Scott himself. They explore in depth and detail available nowhere else his view of the themes and structure of his novels; his experience and views of India; his dealings with publishers, agents, critics, readers, and writer friends (the likes of Muriel Spark, Gabriel Fielding, M. M. Kaye); his role as an agent and influential reviewer of fiction; his trials in supporting himself and family as a freelancer; his experience as a teacher in the United States; and his love and loyalty to family and friends.

Looking for the perfect funny gift for an 18-year-old boy?This unapologetically savage (but parent-approved) joke book is packed with 101 laugh-out-loud roasts about gym obsessions, driving test disasters, broken budgets and “I’ll start on Monday” energy — designed specifically for fresh adult males.Whether he’s heading into uni, work, gap year chaos or just trying to survive life without free Wi-Fi, this book delivers punchy, brutally accurate jokes he’ll instantly relate to (and quote in the group chat within minutes).Inside, he’ll • 101 short brutally honest jokes — perfect for screenshotting and sending to mates• Zero lectures, zero slurs, just painfully accurate 18-year-old reality• A clean, bold layout — one joke per page for maximum impact & scroll-breaker energy• Safe enough for parents to gift — savage enough that he’ll actually laughThis is the ultimate birthday, Christmas or gag gift for any 18-year-old guy.If he speaks fluent meme, panic, and meal-deal economics — he needs this. He may quote these jokes at you immediately.

Part Two Of Two Parts This second volume of Paul Scott's masterful Raj Quartet weaves Indian and English lives into a rich fabric of intrigue, passion and suspense. Through Sarah and Susan Layton, Lady Manners and Captain Merrick on the one hand; Parvati, Kasim and his two sons on the other, we come face to face with the dilemmas confronting all inhabitants of the subcontinent. Violence erupts when the Congress Party calls for nationwide insurrection. Hardship and suffering engulf India and her thronging millions. In a land where all inhabitants revere tradition, change becomes the only constant. "An even richer tapestry of Indian and British character than its predecessor...ramifying, exciting and beautifully constructed." (The London Times)

A retelling of the Cinderella story, illustrated by the author's daughter, Sally Scott, and with a preface by Roland Gant.

If novelist Paul Mark Scott (1920-1978) has secured a niche in English literature, it is on the merits of his Raj Quartet and its sequel, Staying On, for which he won the Booker Prize in 1977. Yet by the time he had published The Jewel in the Crown in 1966, he had supported his family on his writing for six years, worked as a literary advisor for several publishers, routinely written book reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, and Country Life, and published eight novels. Scott's literary reputation was already considerable when, at the age of 44, he embarked on The Raj Quartet that would take up the last fourteen years of his life-a masterpiece that reinterpreted the major events of his generation and challenged his contemporaries to face the legacy of their past. Beginning in 1964, Scott negotiated with the Harry Ransom Research Center at The University of Texas-Austin for the purchase of his manuscripts. Later, when he was teaching creative writing at the University of Tulsa in 1976, he arranged to sell his letters to the archives at McFarlin Library. Many years after his death, David Higham Associates (the literary agency for which Scott worked from 1950-1960 and which acted as Scott's own agent until his death in 1978) sold archival materials to the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin. Only a limited amount of material from McFarlin's Paul Scott Collection has been published to date. The David Higham Collection has not been systematically used until now. Together, the Tulsa and Austin Collections involve many thousands of Scott's professional and personal letters, to a large degree untapped by scholars of literature. In this two-volume collection, Janis Haswell makes available to the reading public for the first time several hundred letters from the Tulsa and Austin archives, as well as dozens of private letters to daughters Carol and Sally Scott. Scott's letters never disappoint. They are intriguing, well-penned and (in most cases) well-preserved in carbon form by Scott himself. They explore in depth and detail available nowhere else his view of the themes and structure of his novels; his experience and views of India; his dealings with publishers, agents, critics, readers, and writer friends (the likes of Muriel Spark, Gabriel Fielding, M. M. Kaye); his role as an agent and influential reviewer of fiction; his trials in supporting himself and family as a freelancer; his experience as a teacher in the United States; and his love and loyalty to family and friends.