The Raj Quartet

Paul Scott’s Raj Quartet follows interconnected British and Indian lives during the final years of colonial rule, from the political crisis of 1942 to independence and Partition in 1947. The four novels—The Jewel in the Crown, The Day of the Scorpion, The Towers of Silence and A Division of the Spoils—return to the same events from different viewpoints, gradually exposing how race, class, sexuality, military service and administrative power shape what each character is able to know or admit.

The sequence begins with the relationship between Daphne Manners and Hari Kumar and the violence at the Bibighar Gardens, then widens through Ronald Merrick, the Layton family, Barbie Batchelor and Guy Perron. Private betrayals and misread testimony become inseparable from the Second World War, the Indian independence movement and the collapse of imperial authority. These two omnibus volumes contain the complete quartet in original publication order.