Tolstoyan in scope and  Proustian in detail  but completely individual in effect, it records the encounter between East and West through the experiences of a dozen people caught up in the upheavals of the Second World War and the growing campaign for Indian independence from Britain. The first novel, The Jewel in the Crown, describes the doomed love between an English girl and an Indian boy, Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar. This affair touches the lives of other characters in three subsequent volumes, most of them unknown to Hari and Daphne but involved in the larger social and political conflicts which destroy the lovers. In The Day of the Scorpion, Ronald Merrick, a sadistic policeman who arrested and prosecuted Hari, insinuates himself into an aristocratic British family as World War II escalates. On occasions unsparing in its study of personal dramas and racial differences, the Raj Quartet is at all times profoundly humane, not least in the author’s capacity to identify with a huge range of characters. It is also illuminated by delicate social comedy and wonderful evocations of the Indian scene, all narrated in luminous prose. The other two novels in the Raj Quartet, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils, are also available from Everyman’s Library. With a new introduction by Hilary Spurling(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)

    This novel follows Psin, a Mongol general, through the military campaigns in Russia and Europe, among his own family and in his own heart.

    Dick Seaton is a shy, handsome American whose business takes him to Japan to close a very big deal. In violation of a timeless taboo, Dick and Kanno spend slow, tantalizing days falling in love. Then Dick discovers that Kanno’s love was paid for by his businessmen hosts. Sensing his rage and hurt, Kanno flees in confusion. And, too late, Dick realizes the truth—that she really loved him. Now, a stranger in a strange, exotic land, he must find her—and seduce her back into his life. Love her for a night… and you will remember her for a lifetime.

    It is the tale of Ronin, a masterless 12th-century samurai knight, who slashes his way up from the gutter to a position of wealth, honour, and status.

    It covers the years 1938 to 1948, her work as a midwife in Chengtu and then going to London with her husband, who was a military attaché there. Also her training as a doctor, the start of the last phase of the Chinese Civil War, in which her husband died fighting for the Kuomintang.She gives a vivid picture of the final years of Kuomintang rule in mainland China, and of reactions to the Japanese invasion. She also tells how she came to write her first book, Destination Chungking. This was actually a joint work, written from her notes but revised by an established writer.

    With her special brand of Irish understatement, she revels in the unpredictability of her journey and in the surprises which make her travels in that unique country such a stirring experience. Having settled in a hamlet in the Pokhara Valley to work at a Tibetan refugee camp, she makes her home in a tiny, vermin-infested room over a stall in the bazaar. In diary form, she describes her various journeys by air, by bicycle, and on foot into the remote Lantang region on the border of Tibet. Murphy's charm and sensitivity as a writer and traveler reveal not only the vitality of an ancient culture facing the challenge of Westernization, but the wonder and excitement of her marvelous adventures.

    I deserve nothing; I have everything. God is the heart of this everything. I have everything - everything I need, and more. ... What I had - Jesus, God, the Kingdom of God - was all I wanted and needed. I didn't want anything different. I only wanted more of what I had. (from the Introduction)

    

    A clear and compelling account of the brutal battle of Kohima that swung the balance of the Burma Campaign in World War Two.

    She loathes herself for being poisoned by capitalist society and its pleasures. A schizophrenic outlook emerges, because Sontag believes that she has found paradise in Hanoi. She forgives herself for the grievous sin of reaping benefits of her own society, which she hates. She is just a radical leftist weirdo, who would not survive 48 hours in the society which she idolizes.

    Three volumes that analyze the secularization and decline of Confucian traditions in 19th- and early 20th-century China.