Staying on

by Paul Scott

This novel, which won the Booker Prize in 1977, is a coda to "The Raj Quartet". It is set in the new India of 1972, where an elderly couple--Colonel Tusker Smalley and his wife Lucy (minor characters in the "Quartet"--have remained to live out their lives in Pankot, the former military station. Tusker's death prompts Lucy to remember and reveal the ironies and melancholy of their uncommunicative marriage.

Editions of Staying on

ISBN 9780226743493	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Univ of Chicago Pr	Date 1998	Price $10.00	New
ISBN 9780893401573	Binding/Format Book	Publisher J. Curley	Date 1978	Price $1.00	Used - Acceptable
ISBN 9780688032050	Binding/Format Hardcover	Publisher Bookthrift Co	Date 1977	Price $1.56	Used - Good
ISBN 9780380460458	Binding/Format Paperback	Publisher Harpercollins	Date 1979	Price $1.00	Good
ISBN 9780886461546	Binding/Format Audio Cassette	Publisher Dh Audio	Date 1986	Price $3.23	Good
ISBN 9780434681136	Binding/Format Book	Publisher Heinemann	Date 1977	Price £9.95	Very Good

Publisher Notes

The sequel to The Raj Quartet, Paul Scott's Staying On describes the fate of Colonel Tusker and Lucy Smalley, a British couple who remain in India after the war. In spite of their woes Tusker and Lucy are wonderfully comic, spirited, and eloquent characters. They reveal the intricate class tensions among the British of the Raj, the ambiguities of relationships with Indian employees, and the mute loyalty and resentful dependence of aging couples.

Media Reviews

"'Staying On' provides a sort of postscript to [Scott's] deservedly acclaimed 'The Raj Quartet'....He has, as it were, summoned up the Raj's ghost in 'Staying On'....It is the story of the living death, in retirement, and the final end of a walk-on character from the quartet....Scott has completed the task of covering in the form of a fictional narrative the events leading up to India's partition and the achievement of independence in 1947. It is, on any showing, a creditable achievement..."

Review this book!