When East meet West: in this satirical romance, Lesley Blanch recreates the British India of the 1850's where representatives of Victoria's England preside uneasily over the glittering remnants of the Moghul Empire. She pillories well-bred, seemingly charming individuals who behave exceedingly badly, and exposes their vices, in the piercing vein of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. The governing class is shown to be decadent and depraved.
The Rao divided women into two categories: those with bodies and those with jewels . . . Prim and proper Lady Florence and her down-to-earth maid, Rosie, first encounter a Maharajah's heir, the Rao Jagnabad, warrior and slayer of nine tigers, when he visits England on a diplomatic mission. Fierce and handsome in gold-embroidered brocades and magnificent jewels, his powerful masculinity is overwhelming and unforgettable. Fate decrees that, some years later, the two women are marooned in a crumbling palace on a remote, jungly island during the Indian Mutiny. They find themselves in the sole custody of the Rao along with two dozen other Englishwomen. A razor-sharp satire on class and Empire, Lesley Blanch's only novel is outrageous and written with high-spirited panache.
JOHN BARKHAM, NEW YORK WORLD - "A delicious tale of low behaviour in high places; with particular attention to the activities of an irresistible and gifted East Indian Prince who takes his own form of revenge against the entire English Empire by inducting a bevy of highborn English females into the fine points of Oriental eroticism, proving that Debrett's Peerage is no match at all for the Karma Sutra."
TIME - "Wildly funny."
REBECCA WEST - "This book is exquisite, and a new story."
OBSERVER - "A mocking confrontation of the attitudes of Clarissa and Fanny Hill set against an exotically sensuous Indian background."
DAILY MAIL - "Cynical, sensual, amusing."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lesley Blanch was a distinguished writer, artist, drama critic, and features editor of British Vogue during World War Two. In 1946 she sailed from England to travel the world with her diplomat-novelist husband, Romain Gary. By the time they reached Hollywood in the 1950s they were literary celebrities. Their marriage of eighteen years ended when Gary left her for the young actress, Jean Seberg. Blanch headed East to travel across Siberia, Outer Mongolia, Turkey, Iran, Samarkand, Afghanistan, Egypt, the Sahara. Born in 1904, she died aged 103, having gone from being a household name to a mysterious and neglected living legend. The author of twelve books, including Journey into the Mind's Eye, Pierre Loti, The Sabres of Paradise, and Round the World in Eighty Dishes, her memoirs - On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life - are published by Virago and La Table Ronde in France. A follow up volume of her writings, Far To Go and Many To Love: People and Places, is published by Quartet Books.
