Description: Colonel Tusker and Lucy Smalley cling to their bungalow in the hills of Pankot after Indian independence deprives them of their colonial status. Lucy, fed up with accommodating her husband, tries to assert her own independence. She and Tusker act out class tensions among the British of the Raj and eloquently give voice to the loneliness, rage, and stubborn affection in their marriage.
Brief description: Paul Scott (1920-78) was a British novelist best known for the tetralogy The Raj Quartet, published by the University of Chicago Press. Scott was drafted into the British Army during World War II and was stationed in India, an experience which shaped much of his literary work. The University of Chicago Press has also published his novels The Birds of Paradise, The Chinese Love Pavilion, Six Days in Marapore and Staying On, the latter of which won the Booker Prize for 1977.
Review Quotes: "[One of] the top 10 books about the British in India. . . . It was the Raj Quartet that made Scott's name, but I prefer the coda to the series. Staying On describes the intolerable Tusker, the retired Indian army officer who has made a financial horlicks by staying on in a small hill town after independence, and his long-suffering wife Lucy, who see their old world shrinking as the new India rises around them, literally so in the shape of the ghastly Shiraz hotel. Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson were perfect in the TV version, but the book is a joy and makes an elegiac farewell to the Raj."--Ferdinand Mount, author of "The Tears of the Rajas: Mutiny, Money and Marriage in India 1805-1905" "Guardian"