Paul Scott

No set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under British rule—"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"—as Paul Scott's historical tour de force, "The Raj Quartet." The Jewel in the Crown opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and Indian demands for independence.

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.