Broken Road

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A.E.W. Mason's The Broken Road is the fourth novel in the 'Lesser-known Raj Fiction' series edited by Ralph Crane. A gripping adventure romance of the Frontier first published in 1907, The Broken Road tells of the building of the Road, and, through the relationship between the two main characters, Dick Linforth, scion of a family of Empire-builders, and Shere Ali, the Prince of Chiltistan, compellingly explores the sense of duty that drove successive generations of British men to sacrifice their lives to the goals of Empire, and the contentious issue of educating Indian princes in England. While undoubtedly reinscribing the image of a confident and secure empire characteristic of much Raj fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the novel also offers unusual insights into the human cost-on both sides of the racial divide-of producing that image, making it of significant interest to readers interested in colonial and postcolonial literatures, as well as general readers. This new, critical edition of The Broken Road, which includes a detailed introduction, a chronology of A.E.W.Mason's life, maps, and extensive explanatory notes, makes available a fascinating work of Raj fiction.

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A.E.W. Mason (1865 1948) was a prolific and extremely popular writer whose career spanned six decades. Two of his novels, The Broken Road (1907) and The Drum (1937), are set in India. Ralph Crane Professor and Head of the School of English, Journalism and European Languages, at the University of Tasmania, Australia.