40. The Far Pavilions by M.M. Kaye (Historical Fiction)

World Lit Challenge: India

Ashton Pelham-Martyn is an English boy whose parents are killed during the Mutiny, and who is consequently raised as an Indian by a Hindu woman. He becomes both insider and outsider to the worlds of native Indians and the British, allowing him to move easily between the two, but also to see the worst side of both. He becomes embroiled in a series of adventures that take him across India and even into Afghanistan.

M.M. Kaye works her usual magic while describing the setting and the people in it, and her protagonist is likable and sympathetic, though not without his faults. The bare outlines of Ash�s story, particularly his childhood, bear a striking (and presumably not-so-coincidental) resemblance to those of Kipling�s Kimball O�Hara, although M.M. Kaye, writing over a half-century later, has a far less objectionable attitude to �the natives�. Like Kipling, though, she was herself born and raised in India, and it shows, particularly in her descriptions of British society and army life in India.

The Far Pavilions is quite long (1,135 pages in my edition,) but I was never bored with it, and was actually a bit sad that it ended where it did. It’s a truly brilliant adventure story, and makes me want to get my hands on M.M. Kaye’s other novels.

Books read: 40/100 (40%)
Pages read: 11,462/25,000 (46%)
Days passed: 127/365 (35%)

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, M.M. Kaye, World Lit Challenge