John Masters

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Lt. Col. John Masters , DSO (born October 26, 1914 - May 7, 1983 ) was an author and officer in the British Indian Army . He was best known for his work on India during the time of the British Raj .

Life

Masters was the son of an officer and came from a family that had a long tradition within the Indian Army .

Masters attended Wellington College and the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst . From 1933 he held various positions within the British Army, including serving in a Gurkha regiment , the 4th Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles in northern India.

During the Second World War he took part in combat operations in Iraq and Burma , during the fighting in Northern Burma Masters had to order the shooting of 19 of his regimental comrades as part of a so-called triage , all of whom were too badly wounded to be able to hope for rescue and would have impeded the orderly withdrawal of their regiment.

Masters processed this event in the second part of his autobiography "The Road Past Mandalay". After retiring from the army, he and his wife moved to the USA , where he first opened an unsuccessful agency to arrange hiking tours in the Himalayas , before finally turning to writing for financial reasons.

He died in 1983 during heart surgery . His ashes were scattered from an airplane over the Himalayas he loved. General Sir Michael Rose , the former UN commander in Bosnia, is a stepson of John Masters.

Literary work

The first two of his three autobiographical books, Bugles and a Tiger (1956) and The Road past Manderley (1961), are among the most important works written about life within the Indian and British armies .

Masters achieved international fame with his historical novels, which treat the story of the Raj based on the fate of the fictional family of officers, the Savage.

He achieved particular success with the novel Bhowani Junction , which has the partition of India as its background and was filmed in 1956 with Ava Gardner and Stewart Granger under the same title.

A more recent adaptation of a novel by Masters is the 1988 film Die Deceivers ( The Deceivers ), in which Pierce Brosnan held the title role, which, unlike Bhowani Junction, was not a notable box office success.

criticism

Masters was countered by critics to overly glorify the British Indian Army and the Raj in his works, often classifying him as a revisionist .

The literary critic Ronald Brydon even described Master's novels about the Raj as "political pornography "

However, there are also dissenting voices who recognize Masters' lively literary style and emphasize his positive portrayals of Indian nationalists , which Masters portrayed quite realistically in the area of ​​tension between colonial rule and the Indian population.

The Indian novelist Khushwant Singh remarked in relation to Masters works, while Rudyard Kipling would have understood India, Masters understood the Indians.

Sir John Keegan has included texts by John Masters in the "Book of War" collection on war history he edited.

Works

  • Nightrunners of Bengal (1951), dt. This is the night , second part of the India trilogy
  • The Deceivers (1952), German Die Täuscher , first part of the India trilogy
  • The Lotus and the Wind (1953), German lotus and wind , third part of the India trilogy
  • Bhowani Junction (1954)
  • Coromandel! (1955)
  • Bugles and a Tiger (1956)
  • Far, Far the Mountain Peak (1957)
  • Fandango Rock (1959)
  • The Venus of Konpara (1960)
  • The Road Past Mandalay (1961)
  • To the Coral Strand (1962)
  • Trial at Monomoy (1964)
  • Fourteen Eighteen (1965)
  • The Breaking Strain (1967)
  • Casanova (1969)
  • The Rock (1970)
  • Pilgrim Son: A Personal Odyssey (1971)
  • The Ravi Lancers (1972)
  • Thunder at Sunset (1974)
  • The Field Marshal's Memoirs (1975)
  • The Himalayan Concerto (1976)
  • Now, God Be Thanked (1979)
  • Heart of War (1980)
  • By the Green of the Spring (1981)
  • Man of War (1983) - US Title 'High Command'

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ronald Bryden: Selected Books (3) . poetrymagazines.org.uk. Retrieved September 11, 2010.
  2. ↑ The Master story-teller . The Hindu. September 13, 2004. Retrieved September 11, 2010.
  3. ^ The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum - Literature . Tribuneindia.com. July 13, 2003. Retrieved September 11, 2010.
personal data
SURNAME Masters, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British author and officer in the British-Indian Army
DATE OF BIRTH October 26, 1914
DATE OF DEATH May 7, 1983