The Painted Cage

Description

Marriage at twenty to an older man takes Amy Redmore from the cool green fields of Somerset to Japan, where Reggie is to take up the post of Secretary for the Yokohama United Club. Already she has learned some disturbing things about her new husband. He has a mistress by the name of Annie Luke, and a child from that liaison. Secondly he is an arsenic addict and habitually takes massive doses - more than enough to kill a normal man. But the real trouble begins with their new life on the Bluff, where the British all live in segregated splendour. Reggie is out all day with his work at the Club and at night he is lost to Yokohama's social whirl and the temptations of the town's notorious pleasure quarter. Amy, with her freshly awakened sense of independence finds new friends, and, more significantly, enemies - people who when the time comes will brand her publicly as an adulteress and a murderess.

Meira Chand is of Indian-Swiss parentage and was born and educated in London. She has lived for many years in Japan, and also in India. In 1997 she moved to Singapore, where she is now a citizen.

Praise for The Painted Cage: The scope of this novel and ...its various beautiful images of imprisonment make the book its author's most substantial achievement...- Times Literary Supplement; What begins as a readable, very ordinary tale, acquires edge and depth in the telling- British Book News; Meira Chand writes with great power...she uses a picturesque language that is both exotic and spare. It is an impressive novel.- Women's Review