The Property of Rain - Hardcover

Lambert, Angela

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593041542 ISBN 13: 9780593041543

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2001

Synopsis

This evocative novel by Angela Lambert is set in India and rural England and is about two young people, from different continents, whose lives become tragically connected.

About this title

From the Back Cover

The date is 1921. The Great War is over, but its aftermath casts a long shadow.

That year, six thousand miles apart, two children are born. Sam Savage, the youngest child of a farm worker, grows up in a tranquil Suffolk village where apparent serenity hides poverty, hunger and the brutality of Sam's father, from which Sam is compelled to escape. Lakshmi is the unwanted fourth daughter of a sweeper and his wife living near Kanpur in north-west India, in a settlement of Untouchables whose culture is as rich as their daily life is poor. At the age of fifteen, these two come together in extreme circumstances, in the midst of the monsoon - an encounter that will have tragic and lifelong consequences. Back in Suffolk seventeen years later, in Coronation year, the rains return to bring about an appalling retribution.

This grippingly plotted novel sweeps the reader through the first half of the twentieth century, conveying a rural way of life that was less idyllic at the time than in retrospect. The book unravels lives and events often distorted by denial and nostalgia. Ruler and ruled confront one another as nations struggle for survival against the forces of sun and rain, greed and pride, under the unblinking eye of the gods.

Angela Lambert writes as compellingly as ever about the patterns and pitfalls of family life, but in this searing novel she also analyses the great historical conflicts that led to the loss of the Empire. THE PROPERTY OF RAIN is her most ambitious novel yet.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593041542
• ISBN 13: 9780593041543
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352