Colonial India: The Saga of an Anglo-Indian Family (Hardbound - 2021)

About Book: It is a partially autobiographical novel about an upper-class Anglo-American family in former British India. The story of the novel moves round the weddings, betrayals, and intrigues between the glitter of the Anglo-American jet-set society and the fascinating yet puzzling Indian world. After a powerful critical work centered on the dramatic situation of both Indian and Chinese girls, sacrificed to the male dominance of these societies, Gwendolyn Simpson Chabrier is back with a partially autobiographical novel, set in colonial India before Independence. The main character and narrative voice of this novel is Romaine, the daughter of a resolute and beautiful American heiress, who arrives in Bombay looking for a rich husband. Through Romaine’s eyes, the novel describes personal issues and key historical events, private vices and public virtues, luxuries and miseries unfold and intertwine, inexorably punctuated by the difficult and often painful search for the roots of this young woman.

Author: Gwendolyn Simpson Chabrier obtained her BA and MA from New York University with highest honors. After studying at Harvard, she finished her doctorate and post-doctoral studies at the Sorbonne (France), also with highest honors. She has taught literature at New York University, the University of Rouen, and the Sorbonne. She has written many books, including Faulkner’s Families: A Southern Saga, Norman Mailer: An American Prophet, An Asian Destiny, Behind the Barbed Wire, India’s Untouchables and India’s and China’s Missing Girls. Her works have been translated into Italian, French, and Russian. She has won five prizes, including the Nabokov Prize in 2015 for India’s Untouchables and the Prize for Peace in 2019 for India’s and China’s Missing Girls published by Atlantic Publishers.