Staying on: A Novel

After writing the Raj Quartet, Paul Scott produced this graceful novel of life in post-colonial India. It is 1972, long after the British have left the hills of Pankot. STAYING ON -- or more precisely, hanging on -- are Colonel Tusher Smalley, an irascible, but endearing arachronism faced with a dwindling supply of rupees and loss of his way of life. With him is his nostalgic wife Lucy, living on memories, Hollywood movies and her will to keep her husband alive.

Pitted against them is Mrs. Bhoolabhoy, their landlady, who wages a bitter domestic war against her tenants. In the end this conflict gives Tusher and Lucy something to rally around -- something that strengthens their love for for each other.

"A graceful coda to the earlier Raj Quartet." (Time)