First published 1975
An unnamed English narrator arrives in India carrying her step-grandmother Olivia's diary from 1923. She wants to understand why Olivia scandalized British colonial society and eventually disappeared into Indian culture. The narrator retraces Olivia's steps in the same small town where her grandfather once served as a colonial administrator. As she reads the diary entries, two parallel stories emerge across fifty years. In 1923, Olivia rebels against the suffocating world of British wives by beginning an affair with an Indian nawab. In the 1970s, the narrator finds herself drawn into similar conflicts between English and Indian ways of life. Both women struggle with the intense heat, the cultural divide, and their own desires for freedom. The narrator discovers that understanding Olivia means confronting the same choices about identity, belonging, and love that drove her predecessor to abandon everything she knew.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, adult-fiction, british-literature
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, parallel-narratives
Setting: India
Period: 1923, 1970s
181 pages · Hardcover · J. Murray