The Property of Rain

The year is 1921. The Great War is over, but its aftermath casts a long shadow. That summer, six thousand miles apart, two children are born. Sam Savage, the youngest child of a farm worker, grows up in an idyllic Suffolk village where apparent serenity hides poverty, hunger and the brutality of Sam's father, from which Sam is compelled to escape. Lakshmi is the unwanted fourth daughter of a sweeper and his wife, living in an outcasts' settlement near Kanpur in north-west India, in an outcaste settlement whose culture is as rich as their daily life is poor. At the age of fifteen, these two come together in extreme circumstances, in the midst of the monsoon - an encounter that will have tragic and lifelong consequences. Back in Suffolk eighteen years later, in Coronation Year, the rains return to bring about an appalling retribution. Angela Lambert writes as compellingly as ever about the patterns and pitfalls of family life, but in this searing novel she also analyses the great historical conflicts that led to the loss of Empire. The Property of Rain is her most ambitious and unusual novel yet.