SOURCE: Alibhai, Yasmin. “A False Orient.” New Statesman and Society 2, no. 54 (16 June 1989): 34.

In the following review, Alibhai criticizes Raj as a meager and bland novel, deficient in characterization and inventiveness.

There is a thin novel somewhere in this fat one [Raj]. Thin as a gruel that hardly satisfies the appetite it raises, in spite of being served up in an aureate bowl on a table heavy with exquisite silver. The story is the personal odyssey of Jaya, a Rajput princess who moves from a life of seclusion and exclusion in a sumptuous palace, first as a daughter and then the wife of a Maharajah, during the days of British rule, to a life of political commitment and power as she applies to be a candidate in the first free elections in her country. Jaya's story is obviously also meant to symbolize the history of India itself as it...