The English Problem

"Shiv Advani is an eighteen-year-old growing up in India. But he is no ordinary young man. Shiv has been personally chosen by Mahatma Gandhi to come to England, learn their laws, and then return home and help drive the British out of India. ... He arrives in London and soon discovers a world he is both repelled by and drawn to. Shiv knows his duty: get in, learn the letter of the law, get out. But as anyone who has ever lived in a British colony can tell you, 'the English Problem' is multifaceted. The racist colonialism of 'the empire on which the sun never sets' seeps into everything--not just landed territories, but territories of the mind: literature, language, religion, sexuality, self-identity. Soon the people Shiv sought to be liberated from will be the people he desperately wants to be a part of"--