Word: hannah
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Mukherjee's true achievement in The Holder of the World, setting it apart from previous works, is her use of the character of Hannah Easton as a vehicle by which moments of public rather than private history are explored. So when Hannah is whisked away to England by a one-eyed adventurer--a man who quickly turns into an absentee husband--Mukherjee seizes an opportunity to illuminate the nebulous relationship between New England and Old England...
Eighty years before America was to break with England, patriots, expatriates and repatriates found themselves on either side of the Atlantic; it was a complicated mess that not many writers would dare to make sense of The relentless Mukherjee approaches this situation through the eyes of Hannah, "an ideal correspondent, the perfect reporter," who keeps a diary during her stay in England. Hannah tells the story of a `desponder' (a term she ascribed to those who would go to America to make quick money and a quick name), Dr. Aubrey, who sets up a practice in Boston and charges three...
...description of the early years of the East India Company on the eastern Coromandel coast of India; little has been written, in any form, on the men who laid the foundations for the British Empire in India, who began as competitors to entrenched Portugese, French, and Dutch trade interests. Hannah has followed her husband to India where he has employed himself with the Honorable East India company...
...husband finds a bibi, a native concubine. The desire for riches and adventure that drove men to India, "jilted by primogeniture," and the insatiable lust that eventually drove them crazy are narrated with a sensitive eye for detail, a fluency of prose, and, most importantly, a surprising detachment from Hannah's personal story...
...story finally reaches its much vaunted affair between Hannah and her Hindu raja, two-thirds of the way through the novel--and gets disappointing quickly. This is the most unsubtle part of the story: Hannah discovers a sexuality she never knew with her white husband. And in developing this romance, Mukherjee leaves the story vulnerable to the familiar interpretation of the East as a hotbed of lust and desire...