East of the Sun

From award-winning author Julia Gregson comes a sweeping historical novel set in colonial India, following three young English women whose journey to the Raj in the 1920s will change their lives forever. As the Kaisar-i-Hind sets sail for Bombay in the autumn of 1928, its passengers are bound for an unfamiliar world. Among them are the women of the so-called Fishing Fleet—Englishwomen sent abroad in search of suitable husbands, often with little understanding of the lives awaiting them. Charged with supervising her young companions, the inexperienced chaperone Viva Holloway watches over three very different travelers: Rose, breathtakingly beautiful and dangerously naïve, engaged to a cavalry officer she barely knows; her bold bridesmaid Victoria, determined to claim her independence before marriage; and the unsettling presence of Guy Glover, a troubled schoolboy whose shadow looms over the voyage. From glittering parties hosted by Bombay’s elite to the harsh realities of Tamarind Street, from foggy London streets to the refined rituals of the Bombay Yacht Club, this richly detailed novel evokes a vanished world of empire, ambition, romance, and reckoning. Lush, atmospheric, and deeply human, East of the Sun is historical fiction at its most transporting.