I approached Heat and Dust warily, expecting another stifling colonial or postcolonial novel but I was surprised to find an intriguing tale of an English woman who runs away with a Nawab. It sounds more sensational than it is but the pages just flew by. It reminded me heavily of The Hindoo Holiday and its strong gay undercurrent lends a unique texture to the book. It amuses me to note the way gay affairs are not spelt out in the older novels, especially the dialogue between the queer characters. The parallels between Olivia's character and the (unnamed?) narrator grew particularly strong in the late chapters, and I liked the echo of a sentence in the first chapter felt across the book - about how India changes everyone and nobody's the same. The sexual nonchalance of the narrator was quite shocking to read about and it was something I never expected from this particular novel.

Overall a curious colonial novel that's lowkey but impactful nonetheless. Recommended!

Spoiler - I don't understand why Olivia chose to go to the Nawab after she got an abortion - wouldn't it have been better to keep the child if she knew that she'd go to the Nawab? As mysterious as her life is after the events, I'm curious to know what happened there. I also don't understand what the narrator is doing in India and the time of her arrival in India is a tad unclear.

I found the novel fascinating with simple but captivating writing. Simple story but deep subtext about colonialism and class and gender and race although completely from the point of view of two British white womyn 50 years apart. I guess it’s an early version of desperate housewives; the British colonists version.

Powerful writing.A small book expertly crafted to deliver strong characters and messages
Not surprising that it won the Booker Prize in 1975.

A beautifully written book set in India in the 1970s and the 1920s (where the protagonist follows the footsteps of her grandfathers wife, Olivia). We don't know the narrators name, but it's fascinating how her (and Olivia's) lives mimic each other by design and circumstance. Filled with scandal and intrigue and populated with characters who manipulate and deceive. Loved this short novel (under 200 pages).

Dated since I last read it about 40 years ago...but still fascinating.

1975 Booker

An excellent, quick read that jumps back and forth in time between 1923 and 1970s India, concentrating on the lives of the wife of a British official in 1923 and her husband's granddaughter in the 1970s.

I've decided that Pulitzer Prize winners are often not good reads if I want to be entertained by something enjoyable. Not so with this book. In addition to keeping me turning pages, I also enjoyed juxtaposing the narrator's life with that of her subject, and contemplating the meaning of why we never learned the narrator's name.

This is a lovely little novel. It immerses you in two different yet parallel India's. One of colonial 1923 and the other independence circa 1970s. It is very hard not to draw comparisons with E.M Fosters great novel "A Passage to India" both dealing with the English/Indian cultural clash and the somewhat mystical draw of India on the European character. I have a particular fondness for literature dealing with the follies of Englishman in foreign lands so this slight novel really appealed. My only complaint is it does end rather abruptly, I could have read a much longer novel with both Olivia and the Nawab as central characters.

The rest of the time Olivia was alone in her big house with all the doors and windows shut to keep out the heat and dust. She read, and played the piano, but the days were long, very long.

Ooh I thoroughly enjoyed this, even though some of the names eluded me and I couldn't always remember who was who. But it didn't really matter. The title is perfect! There's lots of talk about the heat, and many references to the dust. The descriptions are so vivid, I could feel the lethargy and ennui eking out from the page. Wonderful!

Genuinely poor.

Two stories of women whose journeys to India are separated by half a century. One, Olivia, in the later later colonial period in the 1920s, the other, an unnamed relative in the 1970s, who sets out to find out what happened to Olivia. It says much about colonial attitudes and about how experiences can change someone. A short but satisfying read.