Staying On

Paul Scott’s sequel to The Raj Quartet is both an engrossing portrait of the end of an empire and an engaging dissection of a long-lasting marriage. "A graceful comic coda to the earlier song of India... No one writing knows or can evoke an Anglo-Indian setting better than Scott"  (Paul Gray, Time).

Colonel Tusker and Lucy Smalley stay on in the hills of Pankot after Indian independence deprives them of their colonial status. Finally fed up with accommodating her husband, Lucy claims a degree of independence herself. Eloquent and hilarious, she and Tusker act out class tensions among the British of the Raj and give voice to the loneliness, rage and stubborn affection in their marriage.

"Again Scott illumines character with a sense of both the tragic and ridiculous, and this is a memorable portrait of two hanging on after the party is over: "I mean everyone else gone home and just Tusker and me, peering out into the dark, waiting for transport home that never turned up." Funny, sad, and insidiously moving."  -  Kirkus Reviews

Paul Scott is the author of 13 distinguished novels, including his famous The Raj Quartet. He served in the army from 1940 to 1946, mainly in India and Malaya. His novel Staying On, a sequel to The Raj Quartet, won the Booker Prize in 1977.