The Nine Tiger Man: a Satirical Romance (Revised)

Publisher Marketing: JOHN BARKHAM, NEW YORK WORLD A delicious tale of low behaviour in high places; with particular attention to the activities of an irresistible and gifted East Indian Prince who takes his own form of revenge against the entire English Empire by inducting a bevy of highborn English females into the fine points of Oriental eroticism, proving that Debrett's Peerage is no match at all for the Karma Sutra . . . TIME Wildly funny. The Rao divided women into two categories: those with bodies and those with jewels . . . When East meet West: in this witty satirical romance, Lesley Blanch recreates the British India of the 1850's, where representatives of Victoria's England preside uneasily over the glittering remnants of the Moghul Empire. The Nine Tiger Man is a piquant tale of a Maharaja's heir, a Viscount's daughter and an uninhibited chambermaid who sampled one another's environments and were never the same again. The women first encounter the Rao Jagnabad, warrior and slayer of nine tigers, when he visits England on a diplomatic mission. Fierce and handsome in gold-embroidered brocades and magnificent jewels, he meets the prim and proper Hon. Florence at a ball. She is overwhelmed by his powerful masculinity and dreams of him to the exclusion of all else, to the intense irritation of her fiance. Her maid, Rosie, is also overwhelmed and samples the Rao for herself. Fate decrees that, some years later, the two women are marooned in a crumbling palace on a remote, jungly island during the Indian Mutiny. They find themselves in the sole custody of the Rao along with two dozen other Englishwomen. A razor-sharp satire on class and Empire, the outcome is surprising, even to Rosie. Lesley Blanch's only novel was written while in Rajasthan: "I had pulled a ligament in my leg and had to stay on an island in Jaipur. You could hear the leopards coughing at dusk in the far hills, and the parakeets flew around turning the sky green. One day I saw what I thought was a log, but it was a crocodile. I had heard the story of a group of English women being put on that island during the Mutiny and not daring to escape because of the crocodiles they were just stuck there, with no news, and fearing the worst. From that I imagined the whole novel." DAILY TELEGRAPH Panache, high spirits, faultless timing and uncontrollable fun. Contributor Bio:  Blanch, Lesley A scholarly romantic, Lesley Blanch (1904-2007) influenced and inspired generations of writers, readers and critics. She was a distinguished writer, artist, drama critic and features editor of British Vogue during World War II. Blanch was well ahead of her time and prescient in the way she attempted to bridge West and East especially the West and Islam. In an interview with Shusha Guppy, she revealed that 'General de Gaulle wrote me a lovely letter about The Sabres of Paradise, and I have heard that he said it was remarkable that a woman should be able to understand the battles so well and describe them so vividly.' The author of twelve books, including The Wilder Shores of Love, Journey into the Mind's Eye, Pierre Loti and one novel, The Nine Tiger Man, she died in 2007. Her memoirs On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life are published by Virago. To learn more about Lesley, visit her website at www.lesleyblanch.com