The Bloodstone Papers - Tapa dura

India, the 1940s: a time of political turmoil and violence; a country on the verge of its tryst with destiny. Ross Monroe is a boxer, a Catholic and an Anglo-Indian - part of the race which for years has run the administrative side of the Raj for the British. From the brutal boarding school of his childhood, through youth in the Indian Air Force and manhood on the Railways, Ross is sustained by a single dream: to box his way to Olympic victory - until a devastating betrayal by an Englishman sends him into exile, and an obsession which will change his life forever...In present-day England, Owen Monroe, aspiring novelist, is writing the story of his father's life in an attempt to avoid confronting the problems in his own. But family chronicle turns to amateur sleuthing when a chance discovery in a second-hand bookshop provides a clue to the whereabouts to his father's long-lost enemy. The quest that follows takes Owen through the secrets of the Monroe past and into a love affair he could never have thought possible...The Bloodstone Papers pits memory against fiction, love against loss and the certainties of past against the ambiguities of the present - but at its core remains a testament to history's ability, whether we like it or not, to catch up with us. It is a major achievement from one of Britain's most acclaimed psychological novelists.

Glen Duncan's previously acclaimed novels are I, LUCIFER; LOVE REMAINS; and HOPE. He lives in South London.