The Raj Quartet - Paul Scott

Written by Paul Scott
Read by Richard Brown
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

The Jewel in the Crown
The Raj Quartet, Book 1
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: 1991/2010
Duration: 22:41:28

Here is a set of the 4 novels, which comprise The Raj Quartet, all of which are set in India between 1942 and 1947.

The first volume in Paul Scott’s historical quartet opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for self-rule.

Daphne Manners, an unsophisticated British woman and daughter of the provincial governor, visiting Mayapore, falls in love with Hari Kumar, a complex, young Indian who has been educated in England. Inexorably the two lovers are caught up in the social upheaval sweeping India at the end of British rule…until they are parted forever after the fatal confrontation in the Bibighar Gardens. . Kumar will soon be arrested for her alleged rape.

Since the author is saying that their tragedy is as much about India as it is about them, he tells the story in the words of seven diverse characters involved in the affair.

This book became the basis for a sucessful TV series.

The Day of the Scorpion
The Raj Quartet, Book 2
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: 1991/ 2010
Duration: 22:26:16

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.

The arrest by British police of Mohammed Ali Kasim, who is known to sympathize with the Quit India movement, signifies a further deterioration in Anglo-India relations. For families such as the Laytons, who have lived and served in India for generations, the immediate social and political realities are both disturbing and tragic. With growing confusion and bewilderment, the British are forced to confront the violent and often brutal years that lie ahead.

The Towers of Silence
The Raj Quartet, Book 3
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: 1991/2010
Duration: 18:00:20

This volume follows the fates of the Laytons and a retired missionary teacher, all of whom can foresee the end of the Raj—and both welcome and lament its passing.

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, Susan Layton’s future husband.

A Division of Spoils
The Raj Quartet, Book 4
Publisher: Penguin Random House Audio Publishing Group
Release date: 1991/ 2010
Duration: 27:58:05

Against the backdrop of the violent partition of India and Pakistan, this volume sketches one last bittersweet romance, revealing the divided loyalties of the British as they flee, retreat from, or cling to India.

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.

Note - the original Audible was strange, Book 2, Pandora’s Box was in 32k and the rest of the book in 64K

Staying On is not part of the Quartet but completes the theme.

Staying On
Release date: 1991/2010
Publisher: Random House Audio
Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins

In this sequel to The Raj Quartet, 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 Pangkot, with its eccentric inhabitants and archaic rituals left over from the days of the Empire. Only the tyranny of their landlady, Mrs Bhoolabhoy, threatens to upset the quiet rhythm of their days.

Finally fed up with accommodating her husband, Lucy claims a degree of independence herself. Eloquent and hilarious, she and Tusker act out class tensions among the British of the Raj and give voice to the loneliness, rage, and stubborn affection in their marriage.

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.

Staying On won the Booker Prize and was made into a motion picture starring Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson in 1979

Scott’s vision is both precise and painterly. Like an engraver cross-hatching in the illusion of fullness, he selects nuances that will make his characters take on depth and poignancy.” (The New York Times Book Review)

Paul Scott was born in London in 1920. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946, mainly in India and Malaya. He is the author of thirteen distinguished novels including his famous The Raj Quartet. In 1977, Staying On won the Booker Prize. Paul Scott died in 1978.

The original Audible files were not my rip and are uneven in places.