The Far Pavilions

I just finished re-reading this grand novel.Romantic,and exhilarating, this book is as big as India itelf. Passionate lives on dusty plains in caravans surrounded by treachery and peril.Star crossed lovers with the backdrop of the towering Himalayas. This well written novel is highly enjoyable. lucky you to read it for the first time!

The book was better than the movie although the movie was and is very good. Hard to show all the things and situations in the book on the screen. Still I thought the actors and actresses did a good job of portraying the book.

I made myself finish this book because i started it but it seemed endless. It doesn't know what it wants to be, a historical fiction, a love story, a study of military strategy in the 19th century. the last 100 pages were essentially all about an epic battle but really dragged for me.

Excellent novel. It is very difficult to put it down. MM Kaye definitely has a way of capturing your attention and all of your emotions. I would highly recommend it, even though I know it might be a little challenging for someone with no knowledge or experience with life in India.

A fantastic epic thing. If they ever wish to create a movie from the book, it will be a 24 hour thing. And a great Eye opener on history of the white man in the east. Anyone who thinks it is possible to win the war in Afganistan should read this.

A brilliant book. Historically correct. Fascinating glimpse of the John Company in India, and how the Indians felt about it. Romantic interest but not a "romance". I read this many years ago in book form, I was delighted to find it available on Kindle.
A book you can read over and over again

A brilliant book. Historically correct. Fascinating glimpse of the John Company in India, and how the Indians felt about it. Romantic interest but not a "romance". I read this many years ago in book form, I was delighted to find it available on Kindle.
A book you can read over and over again

M.M. Kaye does a wonderfully cinematic job in this mammoth romantic novel of re-creating the India of the British Raj from the point of view of the governed. Her central plot device is not new: Rudyard Kipling’s masterpiece “Kim” imagines a Bombay street urchin comfortable with all castes and classes of India who is discovered to be an orphan of a British sergeant and is drafted into the service of the Raj as a spy. Kipling also imagined a grown-up but well-born version of Kim who disguises himself as a horse groom in order to be near to and protect the woman he loves. Kaye’s hero, Ashton Pelham-Martin is orphaned as an infant when his scholar/adventurer parents are swept way during an outbreak of cholera in their camp; the infant is raised by his nurse, who calls him Ashok, and not until he reaches adolescence does she reveal on her deathbed that he is really an Angrezi.
We follow Ashok’s childhood in the intrigue-ridden palace of a Sultan, his developing friendship with the sultan’s abused daughter Anjuli (forced into a Cinderella role by her evil stepmother), the daring escape from the palace of Ashok and his foster mother, and the sudden drastic change in Ashok’s life brought by his transformation into an English gentleman, educated by and adopted into Victoria’s Corps of Guides, the premier British regiment serving in India (in which Kaye’s father-in-law and husband had also served.)
Ashok, now Ashton, returns to India as a young officer of the Guides, and as a junior officer is assigned to escort two royal princesses to their wedding. You can figure out a lot of what happens next without my telling you, but “The Far Pavilions” is a rousing read for the first 864 pages.

I have to admit that the last 325 pages are a bit of a slog. M.M Kaye could not dodge the actual history of the period, and fabricating some sort of happy ending to an unhappy period in British colonial history took some doing. I still give this book five stars, though, because every so often I just can't keep from picking it up again and going back to the good parts.

Epic novel is epic.

Although I agree with the common sentiment that the last section of this book is a bit out-of-step with the rest in that we've followed the story of Ash and Anjuli through 19th Century India for so long, only to see them sidelined by the story of Walter Hamilton and the Second Afghan War. The latter is also a story worth reading, but it does create an odd shift. Even so, _The Far Pavilions_ is overall a staggering work full of memorable characters and places, emotion, intrigue, politics (identity and otherwise!), pain, and love.

It's been called M.M. Kaye's "love letter to North-Western India", and it certainly is that. It's difficult for me to say for sure, being a 21st century white American, but I find that Kaye wrote with an amazing level of love for, and respect and sensitivity towards, the people and cultures of South Asia.

Oh, for these characters to have lived. And some of them really did - or at least, I can imagine in a special corner of my brain, those very like them.

It's worth noting that due to my desire to finish this book within a reasonable length of time, I actually switched back and forth between the hardcover and the 2012 audiobook, depending on what I was doing. The audiobook, narrated by Vikas Adam, was quite a wonderful performance. Highly recommend.