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and the architect Mr
Bramble, who is engaged to construct a 'Greek Temple' for the Europhile Maharajah. Most of the Europeans emerge as comparatively one-dimensional, in contrast to the complex depictions of the Maharajah, with his profligate life and his homosexual attractions, or of the persona of Abdul, whose relentless pursuit of Ackerley for his own personal gain is more than counterbalanced by the stark poverty of his existence. In a passage written with not a hint of pathos, Abdul's meagre home life is described in vivid detail, before the narrative returns to an extensive series of interactions where Abdul attempts to extract money or influence (or both) from the hapless Ackerley.
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tutor), Narayan (Clerk of the
Maharajah's Guest House), Sharma (the Maharajah's valet, and the apple of Ackerley's eye throughout the book), Hashim (waiter at the Guest House) and finally Habib, described as being "about twelve", Ackerley's miraculously over-zealous servant. Throughout the novel, and
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of the dialogue. At no point are any
Indians held up to ridicule; indeed Ackerley tends to reserve this for the pompous and often absurd Europeans who drift through the narrative - two cases in point being the preposterous Mrs Bristow, whose contrary, vacuous small-talk leaves Ackerley dumbfounded,
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The book has date entries rather than chapters, and is split into two parts. It is explicitly not a travel journal: Ackerley provides no account of his journey to or from India, and he has comparatively little to say about the environment beyond a few descriptions of his immediate locale. As if to
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At the start of the book, Ackerley lists the "Principal
Characters", aside from himself. Tellingly, only Indians appear on the list; despite their presence throughout, he includes no
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is used on a couple of occasions for "away"); instead, much of the comedy stems from
Ackerley's struggles to come to terms with the complexities of
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in 1932, it is written in the form of (and based on) a journal which
Ackerley kept during his five-month engagement as secretary to
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between
December 1923 and May 1924. Described on publication as a "gay satire on autocracy", the text contains four
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In his 1989 biography, Peter Parker, identifies the real names of the characters in the book (pp. 67-72)
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is, certainly in terms of humour, comparatively free of what would be now termed
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further emphasise this, Part One ends with
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A case could possibly be built that
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Parker identifies 'Sharma' with the mononym Rāghunāndi.
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378:orientalism
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375:coined as
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