Rumer Godden 
Kingfishers Catch Fire 

Set in Kashmir, this is the story of Sophie, a young and idealistic English woman with two young daughters who decides to set up house in a remote Indian Village. She finds a tumbledown house nestled into the foothills of the Himalayas and there plans to live peacefully and frugally and at one with the villagers around her. However, she is blissfully ignorant of the turmoil that her arrival produces with the villagers soon in fierce competition for her patronage. Sophie’s cook is finally prompted to take action and the consequences of his innocent plotting are catastrophic. This is a poignant story of the conflict between idealism and reality which has strong parallels with Rumer Godden’s own life and experiences in the foothills of the Kashmiri Himalaya. ‘A haunting tale . . . the whole book burns with the beauty and poetry of a matchless landscape, but the human side of it is wry, delicate and true’ – Daily Telegraph ‘One of our best and most captivating novelists’ – Philip Hensher