3 Review(s)

A very engrossing tale set during the British era. It is a fast moving narrative with humour and anecdotes of the Indian subcontinent and the British ruling class. The story revolves around an innocent heist carried out by a group of simple Indian soldiers to save their honour and in so doing a real life hero emerges who leads an attack successfully during World War II and puts an entire beach, in Indonesia, in the laps of his English masters. After the war he sweeps an heiress, who is a surviving passenger of the ill fated HMS Titanic, off her feet and into his arms. The misdemeanour enacted by the soldiers remains ensconced in secrecy for a decade and half. However, due to a string of circumstances, the perpetuaters are cajoled into revealing the misdeed during a drinking binge in a grand hotel setting in New Delhi ten years after India's independence in a chance encounter with their erstwhile pre-independence British officers. Since the mystery is revealed only in the last few pages of the book, the reader remains rivetted to the novel and is kept spellbound through out.