BY JAMIE FOSTER
Beena Kamlani’s debut novel, The English Problem, is an ambitious work of historical fiction that explores questions of identity, desire and the legacy of empire. It has already attracted considerable attention, including starred reviews.
The novel centres on Shiv Advani, an eighteen-year-old Indian man who, as a boy, was personally selected by Mahatma Gandhi. In 1931, he is sent to London with a clear purpose: to study law, to understand the British, and to return home equipped to contribute to the struggle for independence. Before he departs, his family arranges his marriage to Seher, a woman he scarcely knows, adding a personal dimension to his political obligations. The premise sets up a narrative about a man caught between competing loyalties.
Kamlani’s prose is assured and often striking. The novel opens with the memorable line, “This is how England claimed you—through its rain,” and from there it immerses the reader in Shiv’s experience of dislocation and uneasy fascination. As he moves through London’s legal institutions and the intellectual circles of the Bloomsbury Group, he finds himself drawn to the very culture he is meant to oppose. He encounters figures such as Virginia and Leonard Woolf and E.M. Forster, and these scenes are handled with a lightness that prevents them from feeling merely like literary name-dropping.
The “English problem” of the title operates on several levels. It refers to the racism Shiv encounters, both overt and subtle, and to the unwritten rules of belonging. It also speaks to the internal conflict of the colonised subject—the psychological cost of being educated to admire the culture that has subjugated your own. Shiv’s love affair with Lucy, an Englishman, becomes a way of exploring this tension. The relationship is both tender and doomed, and it reflects his conflicted feelings about England itself.
Kamlani (pictured above), who has worked for many years as an editor, writes with a keen sense of structure and detail. Kirkus Reviews has called the novel an “ambitious debut” that “packs an important dose of relevant history into a very human story,” and this feels accurate. The book is as much about the personal as it is about the political. Shiv’s arranged marriage, his growing attachment to Lucy, and his shifting sense of himself are given as much weight as the historical events unfolding around him.
Some readers may find the novel’s pacing measured, and its concerns are unapologetically literary. But for those interested in fiction that engages seriously with history and with questions of identity, The English Problem offers a great deal. It is a thoughtful and accomplished first novel from a writer worth watching.
The English Problem is published by the emerging publishing powerhouse The Bombay Circle Press and is available to buy on Amazon.