Coromandel Sea Change
From Rumer Godden, the acclaimed author of Black Narcissus returns again to her beloved India win Coromandel Sea Change, a novel brimming with heart, wit, unforgettable characters, and ‘a sense of timelessness reminiscent of E. M. Forster’ (The Times).
Hotel owner Auntie Sanni has entertained all manner of guests during her many years as hostess at Patna Hall, a popular vacation spot on the lush Coromandel coast. Now, with an election coming, business is especially brisk, and her hotel is packed with Indian politicians, British diplomats, journalists, American tourists – even an elephant, and a woman of mystery or two.
Among the vacationers are Mary and Blaise, a young English couple on their honeymoon. But where Mary is enchanted by the colours, sounds and vibrant Indian life, prim and priggish Blaise sees only squalor, sordidness and a Coromandel Sea teeming with sharks.
Matters are only made worse when Mary becomes interested in local Indian politics – particularly the handsome, exquisitely spoken candidate Krishnan, whose kindness and wisdom are like a balm for her spirit . . .
Rumer Godden (1907–1998) was the author of more than sixty works of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and children’s literature, and is considered by many to be one of the foremost English language writers of the twentieth century.
Born in Sussex, England, she moved with her family to Narayanganj, colonial India (now Bangladesh) when she was six months old. Godden began her writing career with Chinese Puzzle in 1936 and achieved international fame three years later with her third book, Black Narcissus.
She returned to the United Kingdom for good at the end of the Second World War and continued her prolific literary career with the acclaimed novels The Greengage Summer, In This House of Brede and numerous others. Godden won the Whitbread Award for children’s literature in 1972, and in 1993 she was named an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. Nine of her novels have been made into motion pictures. She died at the age of ninety in Dumfriesshire, UK.