Comments on: books on british colonialism

Question: books on british colonialism

dstrouse91 — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:27:23 -0800

i am interested in recommendations for novels about british colonial period (india, africa, etc). what are your favorites?

By: malpractice

malpractice — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:37:10 -0800

The Flashman novels by George Macdonald Fraser.

By: Prospero

Prospero — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:38:47 -0800

Red Earth and Pouring Rain, by Vikram Chandra.

By: coelecanth

coelecanth — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:42:33 -0800

Flashman, Flashman, Flashman.

By: andrew cooke

andrew cooke — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:44:34 -0800

greene's heart of the matter; unsworth's sacred hunger.
also, post-colonial, rushdie's midnight's children and non-fiction, said's culture and imperialism.

By: thomas j wise

thomas j wise — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:46:26 -0800

E. M. Forster, A Passage to India
J. G. Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur (more India)
C. S. Godshalk, Kalimantaan
Henry Handel Richardson, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (Australia)
Rodney Hall, The Yandilli Trilogy (yet more Australia)

(And a second for the Flashman series.)

By: caution live frogs

caution live frogs — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:46:48 -0800

I liked the James Clavell "asian saga" books; they begin (chronologically) in feudal Japan and carry on through the British colonial period in China and Japan before moving on to more modern (1970's Iran) locations.

And Kipling, if you're into British India. Gives you a great feel for how the British viewed the Indian people, but it isn't all written from a British perspective. Kipling seemed to identify fairly well with the "native" mentality in some of the stories, and although I'm sure he got quite a lot wrong it's still a better look at India in that time period than I've seen elsewhere. (Not that I've done exhaustive research, but hey.)

Both writers are entertaining, to boot.

By: matildaben

matildaben — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 11:49:53 -0800

I have heard tell of The Raj Quartet but have not read it myself.

By: robocop is bleeding

robocop is bleeding — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:11:19 -0800

Cornwell has a Sharpe prequel trilogy of sorts as he comes up through the ranks fighting England's colonial wars: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, and Sharpe's Fortress.

By: kirkaracha

kirkaracha — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:14:04 -0800

George Orwell's first novel, Burmese Days, is about his experiences as a policeman in the British Imperial police force in Burma (now Myanmar).

It's nonfiction, but his essay "Shooting an Elephant" is an excellent metaphor of British imperialism.

By: LarryC

LarryC — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:30:10 -0800

British North America--The Old American by Ernest Hebert. Terrific insights into Indian society by a historical novelist who does his homework.

By: handful of rain

handful of rain — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:40:40 -0800

The Raj Quartet, mentioned above, is a fantastic and lengthy saga. It's also an excellent (BBC?) miniseries.

The Far Pavillions is another good one. It deals with an English boy who grew up thinking he was Indian, and has the obligatory princess-love story angle. It's a good read.

By: mds35

mds35 — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:40:43 -0800

Waiting for the Mahatma by R. K. Narayan.

By: Dr. Wu

Dr. Wu — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 12:48:23 -0800

Anthony Burgess's "Malayan Trilogy," The Long Day Wanes, is quite good.

By: jdroth

jdroth — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:12:14 -0800

I'll second Forster's A Passage to India, which is a truly Great Book. Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children is ostensibly about the transition from British colonialism to Indian self-rule, though it's also about much more than that. Difficult at times, but a good read. And though it's a completely different ball of wax, Flashman is good, too.

By: scazza

scazza — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:15:08 -0800

Peter Carey's Oscar and Lucinda. God what a great book; it intertwines gambling obsession with feminism, labor causes, the nature of glass, and a heavy dose of religion, all under the umbrella of colonialism.

By: DelusionsofGrandeur

DelusionsofGrandeur — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:16:28 -0800

White Mughals - William Dalrymple.

By: darsh

darsh — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:18:36 -0800

Third Paul Scott's The Raj Quartet. There's a slew of novels about British India - see 'Shadow of the Moon' , by M.M. Kaye for a story about the period around the Mutiny.

The British in Africa - try Weep Not, Child by Ngugi wa Thiong'o for a description of growing up during the Mau Mau 'insurgency' in Kenya in the 1950's.

Karen Blixen's Out of Africa. It's not fiction, but it is an easy read. Or watch the movie.
Elspeth Huxley's Flame Trees of Thika.

By: scazza

scazza — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:24:07 -0800

Oh! Also Late Victorian Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World. Not a novel but absolutely facinating. Social writer Mike Davis examines the "coincidence" between the series of famines that swept accross Egypt to China at the end of the 19th century and the advent of British Colonialism. Ecology, commerce and politics, all explained wonderfully by Davis.

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:27:08 -0800

Kim, Rudyard Kipling.

By: QIbHom

QIbHom — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:42:52 -0800

DelusionsOfGrandeur is right about White Mughals. So good, I immediately interloaned everything Dalrymple has written. Also very different from the usual view of Company India one usually gets.

Also a third on the Flashman books, although they may not be to everyone's taste (he's a right cad, and proud of it).

By: darsh

darsh — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:45:50 -0800

Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart is more about the effects of the introduction of Christianity on the Ebo culture (in Nigeria), than about colonialism as such. But the two are so tied together, really, that it's relevant to your question.

By: deborah

deborah — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 13:55:41 -0800

I second, third, whatever A Passage to India, The Far Pavilions (it's not just a chick novel) and Out of Africa. As mentioned, Out of Africa is non-fiction but reads as easy as fiction. Dinesen/Blixen was Danish but the story takes place in British colonial Africa (Kenya).

By: thomas j wise

thomas j wise — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 14:16:29 -0800

I fourth The Raj Quartet, which is truly wonderful. For more India, try Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's Heat and Dust and Bharati Mukherjee's Holder of the World. (Mukherjee's novel involves the English, although the protagonists are Americans. But it's also an interesting response to Jhabvala.)

William Golding's Rites of Passage trilogy (Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, Fire Down Below) may not be what you want--it's set entirely on the voyage to Australia, instead of in Australia itself--but it's still quite fine.

By: calico

calico — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:19:33 -0800

Late - sorry! Staying On by Paul Scott is set just after the end of the Empire in India. Hope that it still counts in spite of this - it deals with a British army colonel and his wife who decide to stay on in India after independence, and so deals with colonial themes and is besides a rather lovely book.

The last days of the empire in my old home are dealt with in The Last Governor and so again your colonial theme is present and correct - if only just. Read this and the only Tory you won't loathe is the eponymous Patten.

By: calico

calico — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:25:49 -0800

Ah - and another that just edges the period you're after, but this time from the other side: An Insular Possession, by Timothy Mo.

By: jfuller

jfuller — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 17:20:10 -0800

Online for free: Rider Haggard, King Soloman's Mines. Great white-man's-burden adventure pulp to counterbalance the artsy stuff already mentioned.

By: Polonius

Polonius — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 20:21:18 -0800

Another vote for Passage to India.

Also interesting is Jamyang Norbu's The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes. A Tibetan writer with a lifelong Holmes obsession, Norbu fills in Holmes' "lost years" (after Holmes apparently died fighting Prof. Moriarity, he disappeared for several years. Part of this time, he tells Watson later, was spent in Tibet).

The book has great descriptions of colonial India, and is intricate play on Kipling's literature of spies and intrigue in the region. It's an act of reverse colonization, in a sense, because it's a Tibetan living in India (and thus someone on the receiving end of two colonizations, the Chinese and the British) who himself appropriates the colonizer's literature to tell his own story. You could write a whole friggin' anthro paper on it before even opening it. But it's also a damn good read.