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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A simply wonderful read, 18 Mar 2005
What a marvellous work! My copy has the words, "Dazzling" (Guardian), on the front cover, and on the back cover it is lauded by The Times and the New York Times; it would be impertinent to offer any other opinion. I did not watch the BBC dramatisation, and having now read the novel I cannot conceive how a television adaptation could convey more than a tiny part of its myriad strands. The central story is quite slight, but it is a metaphor for the larger picture, and what grips are the context and the backgrounds. The context, of course, is the burgeoning national consciousness that will lead to the independence of India; but along with that there is the slipping through the imperial fingers of the jewel itself, and the inevitability of the decline of all that was British, all that was Empire. Against this huge backdrop, with all its ramifications for global politics, is played out the drama of Daphne Manners and her rape. The balance is perfect: the subjugation and exploitation of a vast, impoverished country by a small, rich European one - and by the British Empire in all its self-deluding glory - versus the violation of one young Englishwoman by natives of that very country. The story itself is told from several perspectives - Edwina Crane, Lily Chatterjee, Brigadier Reid - each fleshed out in intricate, touching and perceptive detail. There are glorious descriptive touches, too: the magnificent description of the Macgregor House early on, for example. Read it like you would drink a premier cru: slowly, savouring the flavour, relaxing and wondering at the skill that has gone into making it.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great exciting book about life in Britsh occupied India., 13 Mar 2002
By A Customer
The Jewel in the Crown is a novel that combines a story of romantic love, a heinous crime and its consequences, and a detailed account of the social and political aspects of life in Colonial India, at a time when British rule was nearing collapse. It also presents the reader with several ironical situations which, if they accomplish nothing in their own right, serve to heighten one's understanding of the hopelessness of any form of reconciliation between the Britons and Indians that could erase more than a century of colonial oppression and native resistance. However, behind all of this, and also in front of it, one basic theme dominates the scene: As Mr. Scott writes in Part Five, the section devoted to 'Young Kumar', 'In India an Indian and an Englishman could never meet on the same terms.' This inescapable fact is what dooms the relationship between Daphne Manners, an English girl living in Mayapore, India, and Hari Kumar, an Indian who was brought up in England. It is Miss Crane's failure to recognise this unequivocal rule that leads to her undoing. It is possible that Paul Scott's main goal in publishing The Jewel in the Crown was to prove that by 1942, after a long history of racism, colonial oppression, and violent native uprisings, the British had no choice but to 'Quit India.' The time when the turbulent events of Great Britain and India's common history could still have been resolved had long since passed. The story was closed; the outcome inevitable. Daphne and Hari's failed attempt to break the old social barrier pushes the reader's hope of British-Indian reconciliation to the ground, and the terrible and ironic fate of the two lovers, and of Miss Crane, all champions of tolerance and understanding among the English and Indian populations living in India, drives that hope into the dust.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magnificent, 9 Oct 1999
By A Customer
"The Jewel in the Crown" combines an almost impossibly deep understanding of India and her colonial rulers with fictional characters of such colour and complexity that it beggars belief they are not and have never been flesh. The decline of British rule and the rise of Indian nationalism forms the background for a novel of astonishing depth and imagination. I cannot wait to read the rest of the books in the series.
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