این کتاب تصویر متفاوتی از هند ارائه می‌کند، تصویری بسیار متفاوت از آنچه در فیلم‌های بالیوودی می‌بینیم. تصویر مردمی غرق در رنج و فقر و بیماری که از زبان یک انگلیسی روایت می‌شود! یک جاهایی هم باید حرص بخوری که انگار نه انگار این انگلیسی‌ها، استعمارگرند!!! تنها تفاوت شاید این باشد که یک نفر از پدر و مادری انگلیسی به دنیا می‌آید و مشکل بزرگ زندگی‌اش «معنا» است! اما دیگری از پدر و مادری هندی زاده می‌شود و هرچیزی در زندگی‌اش مشکل است، جز «معنا»! چیزی که در هند زیاد است، خداست!

3.5 stars
Winner of the Booker Prize in 1975; this is actually quite good. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is an interesting character; her parents fled the Nazis in the late 1930s and she lost many family members in the Holocaust. She lived initially in Britain and then married an Indian architect and moved to India in 1951. She remained there until the 1970s when she moved to the US where she continued her already creative relationship with the Merchant Ivory team and had a hand in a great many of their films. She is a perceptive writer, but is something of an outsider. Her work has been praised widely, but I think Rushdie’s comment about her being a “rootless intellectual” is most perceptive because it sums up the positives and negatives that have been expressed about her work. Keen observation, but the sense of distance.
This novel jumps between India in the 1970s and India in the 1920s. It revolves around Olivia in the 1920s, a new bride in India; married to a middle ranking and starchy civil servant and her step granddaughter (who is unnamed) in the 1970s who is trying to find out about Olivia. There are lots of parallels between the two stories. There are comparisons to be drawn between the two women, between the two India’s, between their two lovers.
The colonial servants are caricatures in many ways; and yet .... in 1983 I was training to be a priest (part of my disreputable past) and I was working in a parish in a wealthy area of Birmingham. I came across a very old couple who were ex- Indian colonial service/military police. They would have slotted into the 1920s section of this book quite nicely. There was no remorse (regret that we had let India go) and no understanding of what Imperialism and Empire was about. It was like stepping back in time. The Nawab in the book is certainly a caricature and has a lack of subtlety; he seems to be a composite of everything that might possibly be wrong with the Indian upper class.
However the portrayals of the two women, I found interesting and the character of Olivia was very good and she deserved a better backdrop. Her reactions to the stifling colonial community and her gradual rebellion were well written. The descriptive passages relating to the heat especially are good and you can feel the building tension in Olivia’s story. It is difficult to understand why Olivia falls for either of the men she falls for; but (apparently) power is a great aphrodisiac. In contrast the two men in the 1970s are entirely different; a hippy/aspiring holy man and a lower middle class unremarkable husband; quiescent in a way the 1920s men were not. Both of the British men fail to cope with India in entirely different ways and both women stay. As you may sense I am a little conflicted in what I think about it and am sitting firmly on the fence!
To conclude, I think I wanted more, but I’m not sure what.

کتاب مانند اکثر آثار هنری نمادین، وزن داستانی کمرنگی داشت و در عوض ظرافت‌های هنری بیشتر.
داستان بی‌آنکه اشاره مستقیمی بکند روایت حال و احوال هند است در اثنای استعمار و پس از استقلال. دو روایت موازی که در رفت و برگشت‌های مدام تلاش دارد مقایسه‌ای میان آنچه هند بود و آنچه هند است انجام دهد.
هندی که می‌توانست مقهور کند و شیفته آنچنان که کشیدن بار نامش سخت دشوار است و هندی مفلوک مفلس و مقهور که تا قله‌های افتخارات خودش را نیز تقدیم بیگانگان کرده است.
نگاه جالبی ست که نشان می‌دهد هند مستقل، از حیث جاذبه و زیبایی بسیار ضعیف‌تر از هند مستعمره ست