The India House

Description

'William Palmer is a fine writer with a gift for narrative and a sharp eye for peering into the dark and dusty corners of the human psyche' - Louis de Bernieres The locals call it 'The India House'. But they have little to do with the three women who live there- grandmother, mother and daughter. Old Mrs Covington dreams of India and the days of the Raj. Her daughter Evelyn watches obsessively over eighteen-year-old Julia. Julia's tutor, Mr Henry, has been instructed to keep her in a state of 'innocence'. Every day he censors the newspaper and reports a sanitised version to the family. But it is 1956 and Britain is changing. Mrs Covington may shut out the modern world, but she cannot prevent the arrival of her son Roland, and her handsome grandson, James. The fragile paradise the women have constructed is about to be changed forever.

William Palmer is the author of five novels, The Good Republic, Leporello, The Contract, The Pardon of Saint Anne and The India House, and a collection of short stories, Four Last Things. He was awarded a Travelling Scholarship by the Society of Authors in 1997. A book of poems, The Island Rescue, won the Collection Prize at the Listowel Writers' Week festival in Ireland in 2006. He reviews regularly for the Independent and other journals. He lives in south-west London. http://www.williampalmer.info/

"A blackly, bleakly comic novel... An enjoyable, original fable" Sunday Telegraph "Casual-seeming but frighteningly perceptive. Palmer is a master of sly, deadpan narration. Not a word or detail seems misplaced" Times Literary Supplement "Wry and vivid, this novel is a little gem" Good Book Guide "Caustically comic" Daily Mail "An absorbing symphonic novel. A delightful, enjoyable tale. William Palmer is a master craftsman" Literary Review