No set of novels so richly recreates the last days of India under
British rule--"two nations locked in an imperial embrace"--as Paul
Scott's historical tour de force, The Raj Quartet. The Jewel in the
Crown opens in 1942 as the British fear both Japanese invasion and
Indian demands for independence. On the night after the Indian Congress
Party votes to support Ghandi, riots break out and an ambitious police
sargeant arrests a young Indian for the alleged rape of the woman they
both love.