Author: Lesley Blanch

Publisher: BookBlast ePublishing

Published: 2019-08-07

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 0993355250

When East meet West: in this witty 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. 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.”