The most recommended books on the British Raj

A cracking, thorough portrait of contemporary Kolkata as the Bengali capital is now known, by an Indian author who grew up in New Jersey (very much the flipside to Calcutta) and who returns to the city of his ancestors to work for a newspaper. The book is well-written, crammed with interesting anecdotes and historic trivia. Past and present are held against the light and the results are often funny. It’s as good as a book by a privileged outsider who speaks the language is likely to be. Perhaps in another decade, a non-fiction chronicle will be written by a resident non-Brahmin writer. I have a feeling the city is waiting for it. In the meantime, Choudhury’s book serves as an excellent introduction to first-time visitors.

People share a complex core of humanity that transcends cultural differences. Rather than being incomprehensibly strange, the passions that move people in "exotic" societies are all too familiar. Compendia of homicide cases in tribal societies that are in many ways different from the one we inhabit support this claim, and my 5th pick is a particularly readable example. Anthropologist Verrier Elwin amassed court records on 107 homicides among the "Bison-Horn Maria" of central India in the first half of the 20th century. The Maria then lived as slash-and-burn horticulturalists and part-time hunter-gatherers, and were, like other "tribals," left to their own devices by the British Raj unless a violent death provoked state intervention. The killings described here are tragic, and the protagonists, though sparsely introduced, fully human.     

I love Rumer Godden’s novels, but I’m even fonder of her memoirs, especially this one. Writing with her sister, Jon, she describes life in Naryangang (then in British India, now in Bangla Desh) during and shortly after World War 1. The large household, the bazaar, the diversity of people, the bright sun and the monsoon rains, the wealth and the poverty, the danger of rabid dogs, the holidays in hill stations…I grew up in India forty years after Jon and Rumer Godden, but in many ways, their experiences bring back my own childhood.

Flashman does a thing I love, which is to tell the story of another book's least notable character.

Harry Flashman comes from Thomas Hughes's 1850 novel Tom Brown's School Days (the entire basis for the Harry Potter novels), where he's a sub-Draco Malfo figure, a useless bully.

Flashman tells the story of his later years as the Victorian Empire's most cowardly soldier, rattling around British colonies, stumbling through their various atrocities and debacles. I wish the book were even harsher on the Brits, but it's a deeply fun counter-text and a lovely bit of escapism nonetheless.

I went to the book launch in support of this author and had the pleasure of meeting him in person. I had not known much of his work previously but that has never stopped me from accepting an invitation to attend. I got the book home and made a start and was hooked by his elegant writing style. This is a book of short horror stories, each beautifully crafted, and inspirational as well as enjoyable. Collected works are a hard thing to get right, and Paulsen makes it look easy. 

Another nonfiction similar in scope and outlook to Kushanava Choudhury’s The Epic City, this title dispenses with the personal narrative and offers a highly structured rundown of the main attractions/points of history/social and cultural issues, etc of the Bengali capital. Not quite a guidebook, Calcutta offers short texts on particular aspects of life in the city, then and now. Well written, the book suffers from the same issue as all other recent books on Kolkata – the British get away with way too much and the post-independence period is seen through the eyes of Calcutta’s privileged elite. That said, this title does well at dissecting cultural currents, and the section on artistic Kolkata is especially rewarding. A great, practical introduction for the first-time visitor.

Another 13-year-old boy protagonist, Kimball O’Hara. No relation. 

I read parts of Kim to Lucian in the studio, he liked the epigraph at the beginning of chapter five: the prodigal son does not stay comfortably in his father’s forgiving embrace, but returns ‘to the styes afresh.’

Kim is a magnificent adventure: the orphan boy who belongs but does not belong to two nations, and a description of the peoples, the ways, the mountains, and the plains of India. 

A vicarious journey around a world of the past, and a particularly male world, which Kipling takes us to.

It would be impossible to create a list of morbidly whimsical books without including Edward Gorey, the uncontested master in this realm. While virtually any of Gorey’s books could be added to this list, his Amphigorey treasuries are the most efficient way for new readers to browse through his books. Since I must make a choice, however, I am selecting Amphigorey Too since this was the volume that introduced me to Gorey’s work when I was seventeen. Furthermore, it also contains a couple of my favourite Gorey tales: The Beastly Baby and The Inanimate Tragedy.

I love a Sherlock and Watson kind of relationship, and this one fit the early days of the British Raj perfectly. Two Brits in the employ of the East India Trading company who could not be more different. Avery is very much part of the system and eager to please. His mysterious guide, Jeremiah Blake, is critical of the Company and gets on far better with the wide cast of locals. I soaked up the historical setting, and the growing intrigue tided me over to the last third, which delivers everything you’d want in a historical thriller.

Another dual view of India, but this one is fiction and written by one author, novelist Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It’s the story of two women at widely different times: Olivia of the British colonial period in the 1920s who, feeling suppressed by conventions of the time, becomes involved with an Indian prince, causing a great scandal, and her step-granddaughter who fifty years later tries to dig up Olivia’s story. Keyline in the novel; “India always changes people and I have been no exception.”