Heat And Dust Book

Set in colonial India during the 1920s Heat and Dust tells the story of Olivia a beautiful woman suffocated by the propriety and social constraints of her position as the wife of an important English civil servant. Longing for passion and independence Olivia is drawn into the spell of the Nawab a minor Indian prince deeply involved in gang raids and criminal plots. She is intrigued by the Nawab's charm and aggressive courtship and soon begins to spend most of her days in his company. But then she becomes pregnant and unsure of the child's paternity she is faced with a wrenching dilemma. Her reaction to the crisis humiliates her husband and outrages the British community breeding a scandal that lives in collective memory long after her death.

Winner of the Booker Prize 1975 The beautiful, spoiled and bored Olivia, married to a civil servant, outrages society in the tiny, suffocating town of Satipur by eloping with an Indian prince. Fifty years later, her step-granddaughter goes back to the heat, the dust and the squalor of the bazaars to solve the enigma of Olivia's scandal.

Heat And Dust : Paperback : Little, Brown Book Group : 9780349000138 : 0349000131 : 06 Oct 2011 : * A profound and powerful novel, winner of the Booker Prize in 1975