SIX DAYS IN MARAPORE

A story of modern India lifts the last veil from her new face and is an unceremonious swansong to the British- on their way out- after the partition of Pakistan. Joe MacKendrick, who has lived in the shadow of his father's authority and his brother Dwight's seniority, is now in Marapore- looking for the woman Dwight had loved before his death in action. There he is caught in the ferment of the new freedom which has not forgotten the bitterness of its old bondage, and as the pukka people are going ""home"", there are those who have no home to go to. Among them are Tom Gower, who had devoted his life to the natives who have now turned against him; and Dorothy, his wife- whom Dwight had loved, whose hatred of her husband feeds on the concealment of her chi chi (half caste) blood. A native demonstration sets fire to Gower's model village; a white man kills in fear- and is killed in return; and MacKendrick offers Dorothy the chance his brother had refused her, only to find that the old taboos of exclusion and repudiation have left her with nothing to give any man.... Intense, abrasive, the many conflicts and telltale stigmata of Hindu and Moslem, white and off white, give this its uncertain temper and certain suspense.