This fairly slim novel
(181 pages), which won the Booker Prize in 1975, is set in the India
of the 1920s with a parallel story taking place in the 1970s. The
contrasts and the similarities in these two stories are woven together to give an intelligent and extremely observant picture
of India in the closing years of Imperialism and India almost three
decades after Independence.
In the story from 1923,
sheltered, somewhat-spoilt Olivia arrives in India as the young
bride of Douglas, an English civil servant. Surrounded by
unbelievable poverty and the heat and dust of the title, she is part
of the English enclave where English traditions are upheld to the
point that if one could remove the heat and the dust one might almost
believe that one was still living in England. The Indians are
shadowy, background figures who are only there to make life more
comfortable for the English rulers. The exception is the Nawab, a
minor Indian prince, who, in spite of his being corrupt and
completely untrustworthy, offers Olivia some respite from an
often-absent husband, loneliness, boredom and even the inhospitable
Indian climate.
In the parallel story, in
which Olivia's step-granddaughter comes to India in the early 1970s
to try to find out what happened to Olivia all those years ago, the
racial tables are turned, although the poverty and the dust and the
heat are the same. Apart from the step-granddaughter (whose name
remains a mystery) and an Englishman called Chid, who has come to
India seeking enlightenment, all the other characters in this story
are Indian. The granddaughter, unlike Olivia, is self-assured and
independent, but, like Olivia, becomes involved with two men, one
from each side of the racial divide. Both women, half a century
apart, are plunged into a situation where they must make a difficult
choice against the background of racial and social expectations; in
the end, it is the country, India, that is the ultimate victor.
There is a restrained,
subtle humour throughout the entire book, which is well-written, and
the descriptive passages are obviously written by someone who has
lived in the country and who has learnt to love it. The excessive
lifestyle of the small group of English civil servants is contrasted
both with the poverty of the ordinary Indian and with the harsh
beauty of the untamed landscape. It is a book about the need to
survive, irrespective racial group or social class, in an environment
where the country itself always has the highest card.
Heat and Dust was made into a film in 1983.