‘BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN...DARKLY COMIC’ David Lodge

‘A BLACKLY, BLEAKLY COMIC NOVEL...AN ENJOYABLE, ORIGINAL FABLE’Sunday Telegraph

‘FRIGHTENINGLY PERCEPTIVE. PALMER IS A MASTER OF SLY, DEADPAN NARRATION. NOT A WORD OR DETAIL SEEMS MISPLACED’ Times Literary Supplement

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.