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Esmond In India
From Simon & Schuster, Esmond in India is Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's novel following a young Indian woman who returns to post-Independence Delhi from Oxford University.Ruth Prawer Jhabvala has constructed a richly ripe Indian comedy of manners. She strips bare that certain section of affluent Indian society which is particularly vulnerable to the seductions of an imperial presence, and brilliantly and wittily crystallizes some of the confusions that bedevilled India at the dawn of Independence.
206 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1958
About the author
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
58 books190 followersRuth Prawer Jhabvala was a British and American novelist and screenwriter. She is best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of film director James Ivory and producer Ismail Merchant.
In 1951, she married Indian architect Cyrus Jhabvala and moved to New Delhi. She began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List of the 1998 New Years Honours and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.
In 1951, she married Indian architect Cyrus Jhabvala and moved to New Delhi. She began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels and tales on Indian subjects. She wrote a dozen novels, 23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the Diplomatic Service and Overseas List of the 1998 New Years Honours and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the only person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar.
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
September 16, 2018
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's 1958 story of post-Independence India started out well with initially interesting characters and vivid settings but midway through the book I grew impatient with the meandering plot threads. Everyone in the book seems locked in patterns of mutual incomprehension, endlessly talking, talking, talking to no point. Esmond, the handsome blond Englishman, was utterly despicable . I kept hoping for a little action but next to nothing ever happens and the book ends abruptly . Irritating and rather boring.
June 15, 2011
I can only say to add more words of praise of this, for me, truly astonishing book. Having visited India all that the author writes is true, witty, with an underlying seriousness. I couldn't put the book down.
November 2, 2008
One of the best India novels I've read. It lines up with my view of the country and its people very well, and beautifully written.
July 27, 2007
I loved this book. I love the writing. The author has a very sardonic voice and writes about high class society in India with such spirited irony. Actually, truthfully, it's not irony, but the other word that I don't remember which means something like well-concealed-in-humor-contempt. A bit like Oscar Wilde.
I like her writing so much that I also read her Booker Prize winning novel, Heat and Dust.
I like her writing so much that I also read her Booker Prize winning novel, Heat and Dust.
February 22, 2013
If you want to go to India, but can't afford air fare, this book will take you there. True, it's the India of 40 years ago and a lot has changed since then, but it's a good read about a stuffed shirt who thinks he's superior to the natives. The scene in which he tries to locate his shoes in the scramble of tourist footwear at the Taj Mahal is priceless.
March 3, 2019
Shakuntala is young, idealistic and educated. With her BA degree completed the world seems full of opportunities. Hanging around the house with her pretty-but-simple sister-in-law, her ever-so-correct and dainty mother and a houseful of servants is giving her itchy feet. She adores her father, Har Dayal, because he’s an educated and highly cultured man but what’s a girl to do when there’s no clear route forward for someone like her? These are the 1950s, India has shaken off the shackles of Empire rule and a smart young woman must surely have more to look forward to than a loveless arranged marriage.
Shakuntala couldn’t be more different than Indira, her sister-in-law, who in turn thinks life just couldn’t be more delightful than sipping tea with Shakuntala’s mother and discussing the selection of wedding presents for other well-to-do people. Across the city Shakuntala’s old school friend Gulab is lazing around her apartment, barely bothering to dress most days and whiling away the hours doting on her beautiful child. If all had gone to plan Gulab would have been Shakuntala’s sister-in-law as she’d been lined up for marriage to the latter’s brother. Instead Gulab fell for the enigmatic and charming Esmond Stillwood, married him and now seems fated to spend the rest of her life being despised by the man who chose her. The native beauty Esmond fell for has turned out to be rather too languid and ‘animal like’ for his tastes.
'Esmond in India' is not – as the title might suggest – really much about Esmond at all. Esmond’s role is largely symbolic. He represents the ones who stayed on after India achieved Independence, a man who finds himself as a cultured fish out of water. Whilst his status is based on the twin handicaps of education and dashing good looks, Esmond is not the success he imagines he should be. The Indian elite are living life high on the hog, whilst poor old Esmond is earning a poor income offering classes in cultural topics to bored European housewives, forced to take the bus rather than using cabs or keeping a driver and rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed a lot more than he would choose to. To assuage the disappointment of his poverty he seeks comfort in the arms of wealthier white women. Esmond has ‘taste’ in a land where such things still matter but not as much as they used to. As Esmond bounces around the bedrooms of bored women across Delhi, Gulab sits at home telling her disapproving mother, Uma, that at least Esmond only goes with white women, as if somehow that lessens the betrayal of his infidelities.
Uma longs to take her daughter back from this dreadful Englishman and reinstall her in her marvellous old mansion, once a grand and now a rather decrepit old place inhabited by a motley array of the great and the good of the Independence movement. Her late husband died in prison, a hero of the movement, leaving Uma with a political status which belies her relative impecunity. Her brother, Ram Nath, and his wife Lakshmi (named for the goddess of a wealth they no longer have) have fallen on hard times, with Lakshmi left to bemoan the new India in which heroes like her husband are pushed aside in favour of the nouveau powerful like Har Dayal.
Har Dayal and Ram Nath were both students in Cambridge and Har Dayal hero worships his older friend. He would give anything to please him – or so he thinks until the day when Ram Nath asks for the one thing he can’t give, his daughter’s hand in marriage for his son. How can he push her to marry whilst totally failing to spot that Shakuntala has already found the man she wants (and who inevitably won’t want her after the initial glow of passion has passed)?
Life in 1950s Delhi was a time of reinvention and redefinition. The men who plotted to drive the British out of their country were in the main part wealthy and British educated or if not wealthy then certainly educated. The poor man in the street didn’t care too much who was running things. Men like Jawaharlal Nehru (the first Indian president), Mohammed Ali Jinnah(the architect of the creation of Pakistan) and Mohandas K Gandhi British educated and trained in the British legal system. Oxford and Cambridge educated sons of high-born parents drove the Independence movement and the older characters in ‘Esmond and India’ are from this strata of Indian society. These are the men who were educated abroad and returned in their smart suits with their English ‘ways’ only to give them up and adapt the homespun cottons espoused by Gandhi. Some went to prison, lost their possessions, went on hunger strikes and in some cases even died for their countries whilst others kept their heads down and reaped the benefits of the protests of their peers. This is a period that’s not much written about in novels about the sub-continent and is all the more fascinating for that. One of the core themes of the book is the unfairness of life – that those who deserve success rarely get it whilst others less responsible for the changes, happily take on the benefits of high office once the dirty work of fighting for Independence is out of the way.
If Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope had lived in India in the 1950s, ‘Esmond in India’ is the book one of them would have written. If you’re looking for Pride and Prejudice, both are there in abundance. If you want a hero, there’s none to be found. Ram Nath’s wife is desperately offended that Har Dayal’s wife looks at her like dirt, when her husband should be getting treated like a hero instead of getting steadily poorer. In turn Har Dayal’s wife is so genteel she’s barely breathing or showing outward signs of life – you just know she would never sweat, burp or go to the toilet, she’s just that genteel. If you like confusion caused more by what’s unsaid than by what’s actually out in the open, then this is the book for you. It’s hard to say if this is a comedy or a tragedy since it has elements of both but what really shines through is the constricted society of manners and being seen to do the ‘right thing’. The characters are mostly silly or unlikable and, with the possible exception of the two older men, Ram Nath and Har Dayal, they’re hard to feel any sympathy for. In their own different ways, the characters are not exactly given to much in the way of hidden depths – educated Shakuntala turning out to be every bit as flighty as her silly sister-in-law, or bovine Gulab. The arguments and offences taken between the wives and mothers are amusing, painfully transparent and highly entertainment. But if you’re looking for a book that gets to the point, ends properly and ties up all the loose ends, then this isn’t the one for you – you’ll be left with as much of a mess of emotions and relationships at the end as you’ll find at the beginning and of course, it’s all beautifully written and expressed.
Shakuntala couldn’t be more different than Indira, her sister-in-law, who in turn thinks life just couldn’t be more delightful than sipping tea with Shakuntala’s mother and discussing the selection of wedding presents for other well-to-do people. Across the city Shakuntala’s old school friend Gulab is lazing around her apartment, barely bothering to dress most days and whiling away the hours doting on her beautiful child. If all had gone to plan Gulab would have been Shakuntala’s sister-in-law as she’d been lined up for marriage to the latter’s brother. Instead Gulab fell for the enigmatic and charming Esmond Stillwood, married him and now seems fated to spend the rest of her life being despised by the man who chose her. The native beauty Esmond fell for has turned out to be rather too languid and ‘animal like’ for his tastes.
'Esmond in India' is not – as the title might suggest – really much about Esmond at all. Esmond’s role is largely symbolic. He represents the ones who stayed on after India achieved Independence, a man who finds himself as a cultured fish out of water. Whilst his status is based on the twin handicaps of education and dashing good looks, Esmond is not the success he imagines he should be. The Indian elite are living life high on the hog, whilst poor old Esmond is earning a poor income offering classes in cultural topics to bored European housewives, forced to take the bus rather than using cabs or keeping a driver and rubbing shoulders with the great unwashed a lot more than he would choose to. To assuage the disappointment of his poverty he seeks comfort in the arms of wealthier white women. Esmond has ‘taste’ in a land where such things still matter but not as much as they used to. As Esmond bounces around the bedrooms of bored women across Delhi, Gulab sits at home telling her disapproving mother, Uma, that at least Esmond only goes with white women, as if somehow that lessens the betrayal of his infidelities.
Uma longs to take her daughter back from this dreadful Englishman and reinstall her in her marvellous old mansion, once a grand and now a rather decrepit old place inhabited by a motley array of the great and the good of the Independence movement. Her late husband died in prison, a hero of the movement, leaving Uma with a political status which belies her relative impecunity. Her brother, Ram Nath, and his wife Lakshmi (named for the goddess of a wealth they no longer have) have fallen on hard times, with Lakshmi left to bemoan the new India in which heroes like her husband are pushed aside in favour of the nouveau powerful like Har Dayal.
Har Dayal and Ram Nath were both students in Cambridge and Har Dayal hero worships his older friend. He would give anything to please him – or so he thinks until the day when Ram Nath asks for the one thing he can’t give, his daughter’s hand in marriage for his son. How can he push her to marry whilst totally failing to spot that Shakuntala has already found the man she wants (and who inevitably won’t want her after the initial glow of passion has passed)?
Life in 1950s Delhi was a time of reinvention and redefinition. The men who plotted to drive the British out of their country were in the main part wealthy and British educated or if not wealthy then certainly educated. The poor man in the street didn’t care too much who was running things. Men like Jawaharlal Nehru (the first Indian president), Mohammed Ali Jinnah(the architect of the creation of Pakistan) and Mohandas K Gandhi British educated and trained in the British legal system. Oxford and Cambridge educated sons of high-born parents drove the Independence movement and the older characters in ‘Esmond and India’ are from this strata of Indian society. These are the men who were educated abroad and returned in their smart suits with their English ‘ways’ only to give them up and adapt the homespun cottons espoused by Gandhi. Some went to prison, lost their possessions, went on hunger strikes and in some cases even died for their countries whilst others kept their heads down and reaped the benefits of the protests of their peers. This is a period that’s not much written about in novels about the sub-continent and is all the more fascinating for that. One of the core themes of the book is the unfairness of life – that those who deserve success rarely get it whilst others less responsible for the changes, happily take on the benefits of high office once the dirty work of fighting for Independence is out of the way.
If Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope had lived in India in the 1950s, ‘Esmond in India’ is the book one of them would have written. If you’re looking for Pride and Prejudice, both are there in abundance. If you want a hero, there’s none to be found. Ram Nath’s wife is desperately offended that Har Dayal’s wife looks at her like dirt, when her husband should be getting treated like a hero instead of getting steadily poorer. In turn Har Dayal’s wife is so genteel she’s barely breathing or showing outward signs of life – you just know she would never sweat, burp or go to the toilet, she’s just that genteel. If you like confusion caused more by what’s unsaid than by what’s actually out in the open, then this is the book for you. It’s hard to say if this is a comedy or a tragedy since it has elements of both but what really shines through is the constricted society of manners and being seen to do the ‘right thing’. The characters are mostly silly or unlikable and, with the possible exception of the two older men, Ram Nath and Har Dayal, they’re hard to feel any sympathy for. In their own different ways, the characters are not exactly given to much in the way of hidden depths – educated Shakuntala turning out to be every bit as flighty as her silly sister-in-law, or bovine Gulab. The arguments and offences taken between the wives and mothers are amusing, painfully transparent and highly entertainment. But if you’re looking for a book that gets to the point, ends properly and ties up all the loose ends, then this isn’t the one for you – you’ll be left with as much of a mess of emotions and relationships at the end as you’ll find at the beginning and of course, it’s all beautifully written and expressed.
May 14, 2013
Shakuntala is a young Indian woman who comes home to live with her propserous family in post independance Delhi.
Was slightly dissatisfied with this book. Written in the 1950s, approximately the same time as the book is set, there is the occasional interesting or amusing section, but this is countered by rambling page long paragraphs, that soon bored me. I didnt really engage much with any of the characters, and was still trying to sort out everyone's relationship with each other at the end of the 200 pages. will not be running out to get other books from this author
Was slightly dissatisfied with this book. Written in the 1950s, approximately the same time as the book is set, there is the occasional interesting or amusing section, but this is countered by rambling page long paragraphs, that soon bored me. I didnt really engage much with any of the characters, and was still trying to sort out everyone's relationship with each other at the end of the 200 pages. will not be running out to get other books from this author
September 20, 2012
This book is hilarious and a fast read. The narrative is written in third person but with a charmingly sarcastic voice that easily highlights the ridiculous behavior of the characters. A charming mockery of orientalism, Western imperialism, expats, and social climbers.
October 23, 2017
Delightful! What a clash of destinies, what a beautiful story of crossroads. While India transitions from a colony to an independent country, three families try to be independent of their demons, prejudices and revenges. Highly recomended!
December 9, 2011
Not what i expected. Liked it
December 26, 2012
Beautiful characterizations and commentary on Indian (and Western) society. However, I was left hanging at the end. The book seems to be more of a character study than a story.
December 24, 2013
i m not very pleased with this narrative
April 5, 2020
I had had this little novel sitting on my shelf for a while and I picked it up on a whim and I actually really enjoyed it.
This is mainly a character study of very different individuals in a similar position in the class system in India, yet they live very different lives. Some out of choice, some by circumstance. The main subject are the women, though the men are touched upon as well. A lot of the novel is internal thoughts and we the various characters have very different ideas about what is important in life and what consitutes happiness and usefullness.
For a little novel it took me a while to read it and it dragged in places, but it never bored me. It was really interesting to read about a bunch of people in a country and culture so different from my own. The single British character, Esmond, is the perfect contrast to Indian culture and I felt that however much he thought he had embraced his adopted country, he could not be more apart from it.
If you like a comedy of manners kind of book, you may well enjoy this! I have another book by this author and I will definitely read that in the future. I enjoyed this!
This is mainly a character study of very different individuals in a similar position in the class system in India, yet they live very different lives. Some out of choice, some by circumstance. The main subject are the women, though the men are touched upon as well. A lot of the novel is internal thoughts and we the various characters have very different ideas about what is important in life and what consitutes happiness and usefullness.
For a little novel it took me a while to read it and it dragged in places, but it never bored me. It was really interesting to read about a bunch of people in a country and culture so different from my own. The single British character, Esmond, is the perfect contrast to Indian culture and I felt that however much he thought he had embraced his adopted country, he could not be more apart from it.
If you like a comedy of manners kind of book, you may well enjoy this! I have another book by this author and I will definitely read that in the future. I enjoyed this!
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December 16, 2021What a sad book. No one was happy, no one was fulfilled, nobody had an adventure. Shakuntala slept with a third rate Englishman. Har Dayal betrayed his friend. Everyone betrayed their ideals. The only characters I liked were Uma (who was genuinely caring) and Narayan (who never actually made an appearance). The book is billed as a comedy of manners but I think it’s a tragedy of manners. It’s beautifully written, but wistful and elegiac. A story of muddle.
July 25, 2025
I can't believe that I've been lugging this book around for the past 30 odd years; what a waste. I was intrigued by this story because of the author's unique perspective and her connection to the Merchant and Ivory films that I was obsessed with as a kid, but I just cringed through the whole thing. I feel like I must be missing something, perhaps reading it with a modern eye is not constructive, ultimately I just didn't like it or any of the characters depicted in this heartbreaking novel.
July 18, 2022
wound enticingly around my shoulders like a nice shawl. a whole menagerie of conflicted vivid characters who are very entertaining. however wildly wildly unfinished. clearly the author had no vision for the ending.
October 15, 2023
Good writing but characters were utterly unlikeable and really just boring caricatures. The book is about the relationship between Europeans and Indias post independence but really just a very specific instance of it and not a very interesting one at that.
July 8, 2018
I’ve not been disappointed in any of the books I’ve read by this author. This was another wonderful read.
September 30, 2018
Not a fan of this, it was hard work to finish it. Shakuntala I always 'read' as Shakira.
January 4, 2019
Read this for the second time after reading it some 20 years ago. I hadn't remembered anything but liking it. And it IS good.
March 22, 2019
This is a delightful read with meticulous details about life in post-Britain India.
July 2, 2020
What a gem! Slow moving intricate novel about family relationships in India- great literature!
October 20, 2021
The pace was too slow and anticlimactic
November 29, 2023
Great worldbuilding and breathing, complex characters; but the book ends before the story does leaving many storylines unaddressed.
December 25, 2025
Very interesting — often funny, often sad — look at post partition India. Really enjoyed but ending was pretty abrupt
August 24, 2024
really lovely and not too demanding read - beautiful descriptive passages and good amount of humor. depicts indian family dynamics really well.
November 12, 2013
Me ha gustado bastante, describe un poco la situación de la India después de la independencia, cómo afectó a determinadas clases sociales y sobre todo a los que tomaron parte en la lucha por ella. Pero principalmente trata de cómo es la vida para las clases más favorecidas, sus costumbres y sus prejuicios. Los personajes están muy bien trazados y me han parecido realistas aunque ninguno me ha caído del todo bien. No es tan exhaustivo como otros libros que he leído sobre la India pero cumple de sobra para sus 370 páginas.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews