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A new dominion
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- GenresFiction
218 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1972
3 people are currently reading
42 people want to read
About the author
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
58 books189 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 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 18, 2015
Here we have a tale of India in the 1950s involving a dozen or so locals and five Westerners, namely a young male tourist, Raymond; an elderly Christian missionary, Miss Charlotte; and three young girls, Lee, Margaret and Evie who are on a spiritual quest. The author, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1927-2013), was of German-Polish origin, educated in England, who married an Indian architect. She wrote numerous novels, short stories and film scripts to much acclaim. This work was first published in 1972.
The character Lee narrates some chapters in the first person but the other parts of the book are written in the third person, Raymond being the principal focus of attention. Lee is a flighty, naïve young woman whose main interest is to travel leisurely across the continent, breathing in the local culture and contemplating the varied scenery. However, at one point she—as well as the other two girls—becomes drawn to a charismatic and manipulative guru Swamiji. Lee becomes a resident of his embryonic and primitive ashram along with the other girls. Each of them falls under his spell which includes unquestioned worshipful obedience.
The reader will puzzle about the character Raymond. He is an effeminate mama’s boy, writing weekly or twice weekly to his mother in England. He showers his affections on a ‘pretty-boy’, Gopi, and much of the book recounts their companionship, break-ups and reconciliations. Their relationship is latently homosexual but is never actualized in that way. Gopi, a lazy and frivolous drift-about, by feigning friendship, is able to control Raymond to provide him with leisurely comforts and pursuits but sexually he is attracted to women. He becomes a love-slave to Asha, a middle-aged self-indulgent princess. That liaison stirs up jealous rivalry between Raymond and Asha for Gopi’s attention.
I found this novel to be an interesting reflection of Indian post-colonial culture. Hundreds of years of British rule had set a strong imprint on the Indian psyche. Behaving and striving to be like the English became an ideal for Indians to emulate. But at the same time average Indians yearned to be free of British dominance, to show themselves to be equal to, or better than, Westerners in the spheres of business, administration, politics, healthcare, religion and even sexual liberalism. The author paints a realistic picture of a drab 1950s Indian society with some Westerners caught in its frantic and frenetic environment. Ironies and witticisms are skillfully interwoven into the lives of the characters.
The character Lee narrates some chapters in the first person but the other parts of the book are written in the third person, Raymond being the principal focus of attention. Lee is a flighty, naïve young woman whose main interest is to travel leisurely across the continent, breathing in the local culture and contemplating the varied scenery. However, at one point she—as well as the other two girls—becomes drawn to a charismatic and manipulative guru Swamiji. Lee becomes a resident of his embryonic and primitive ashram along with the other girls. Each of them falls under his spell which includes unquestioned worshipful obedience.
The reader will puzzle about the character Raymond. He is an effeminate mama’s boy, writing weekly or twice weekly to his mother in England. He showers his affections on a ‘pretty-boy’, Gopi, and much of the book recounts their companionship, break-ups and reconciliations. Their relationship is latently homosexual but is never actualized in that way. Gopi, a lazy and frivolous drift-about, by feigning friendship, is able to control Raymond to provide him with leisurely comforts and pursuits but sexually he is attracted to women. He becomes a love-slave to Asha, a middle-aged self-indulgent princess. That liaison stirs up jealous rivalry between Raymond and Asha for Gopi’s attention.
I found this novel to be an interesting reflection of Indian post-colonial culture. Hundreds of years of British rule had set a strong imprint on the Indian psyche. Behaving and striving to be like the English became an ideal for Indians to emulate. But at the same time average Indians yearned to be free of British dominance, to show themselves to be equal to, or better than, Westerners in the spheres of business, administration, politics, healthcare, religion and even sexual liberalism. The author paints a realistic picture of a drab 1950s Indian society with some Westerners caught in its frantic and frenetic environment. Ironies and witticisms are skillfully interwoven into the lives of the characters.
June 7, 2016
I always enjoy reading Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's books. The way she connects the four main characters together is very clever. Though no character is completely happy they find a level of acceptance in the end.
December 2, 2024
A New Dominion by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a novel of a certain type. It concentrates heavily on interpersonal relationships in situations where individuals might feel culturally as well as personally challenged. The author is famous for her observations of India, its society and religion, and, crucially, its two-way relationship with his former colonial master, the United Kingdom. She wrote screenplays for Merchant-Ivory films and won the book of prize for Heat and Dust.
In A New Dominion, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala describes events that befall a group of people assembled by circumstance in provincial India, though there are some essential sections in Benaras. There are the inevitable English characters, journeying different ways towards their different goals, all deeply personal. There are Indian middle classes, Indian royalty, and Indian servants. There is, just for balance, eventually an Indian businessman, fresh from a business degree in New York University, ready to challenge existing social and economic relationships in the manner that is many times more fundamental than anything dreamed up by a colonial administration.
Amongst the English travellers, there is a young woman who wears local dresses, though not, it seems, “local dress”. She and her companions are on a mission to find themselves, a process that has to start with travelling along way from home. There is a young Indian playboy, who is ready to adopt any persona whatsoever that will lead to profit and self-aggrandisement. He seems unsure of his sexuality, but in the end leans whichever way availability beckons. For one of the travellers, finding oneself seems to involve rejecting everything from the culture that came from what might be described as “home”. For another seeker after truth, an ultimate truth is found via hepatitis, a disease that is constantly denied by a self-obsessed colleague.
A middle-class Englishman with homosexual leanings, put down by locals to his public-school background, writes to his mother regularly. He can’t decide what he wants or where he wants to be.
A middle-class Indian woman apparently can no longer live with what she has grown into. She wants to live in a past that she thinks continually surrounds her. The servant takes against what he sees as privileged youth.
What happens to these characters is crucial, so read the book to find out. The text is arranged like a screenplay, with chapters devoted to the point of view of a particular character. There are some intriguing insights, but don’t expect from A New Dominion the kind of visceral, politically and culturally charged atmosphere the pervades the writing of Paul Scott. Though superficially similar, Scott’s and Prawer Jhabvala’s work are fundamentally different in that the latter does not approach history with a journalist’s eye. Unlike the former, she seems to want to concentrate on what is enigmatic, rather than the consequences of power relations and spite.
In A New Dominion, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala describes events that befall a group of people assembled by circumstance in provincial India, though there are some essential sections in Benaras. There are the inevitable English characters, journeying different ways towards their different goals, all deeply personal. There are Indian middle classes, Indian royalty, and Indian servants. There is, just for balance, eventually an Indian businessman, fresh from a business degree in New York University, ready to challenge existing social and economic relationships in the manner that is many times more fundamental than anything dreamed up by a colonial administration.
Amongst the English travellers, there is a young woman who wears local dresses, though not, it seems, “local dress”. She and her companions are on a mission to find themselves, a process that has to start with travelling along way from home. There is a young Indian playboy, who is ready to adopt any persona whatsoever that will lead to profit and self-aggrandisement. He seems unsure of his sexuality, but in the end leans whichever way availability beckons. For one of the travellers, finding oneself seems to involve rejecting everything from the culture that came from what might be described as “home”. For another seeker after truth, an ultimate truth is found via hepatitis, a disease that is constantly denied by a self-obsessed colleague.
A middle-class Englishman with homosexual leanings, put down by locals to his public-school background, writes to his mother regularly. He can’t decide what he wants or where he wants to be.
A middle-class Indian woman apparently can no longer live with what she has grown into. She wants to live in a past that she thinks continually surrounds her. The servant takes against what he sees as privileged youth.
What happens to these characters is crucial, so read the book to find out. The text is arranged like a screenplay, with chapters devoted to the point of view of a particular character. There are some intriguing insights, but don’t expect from A New Dominion the kind of visceral, politically and culturally charged atmosphere the pervades the writing of Paul Scott. Though superficially similar, Scott’s and Prawer Jhabvala’s work are fundamentally different in that the latter does not approach history with a journalist’s eye. Unlike the former, she seems to want to concentrate on what is enigmatic, rather than the consequences of power relations and spite.
October 4, 2023
wonderful love this writer and the evocation of India through the eyes of strangers trying to settle and merge into the culture.
August 9, 2011
Very sympathetic characters, poignant in places, but somehow less than I hoped. A bit flat.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews