What did you like best about The Far Pavilions? What did you like least?
I have known and loved this story for more than twenty years. Despite misgivings about the sound of the story when I listened to the excerpt, I went ahead and bought this title because I just wanted it to be all right.
What didn’t you like about Vikas Adam’s performance?
Oh, dear. Why, oh why use someone of Indian origin (fine and appropriate) but with an American accent(!) to read a story of an English boy raised as an Indian in the aftermath of the Great Mutiny, then sent to England to be educated as his father's son, returning to India as an English army officer? The narrator just sounds so wrong whenever he speaks as an English person.....there are so many American-style mispronunciations to an English ear (Torquay = Torkway / Torkay; roan = rowan; subaltern = subALLtern; route = rout, etc., etc., etc...) and he has no idea at all of how well-spoken English people of the mid-19th century would have sounded. For example, poor Wally, who we are told lapsed into "occasional use of brogue", comes over as comic 'Oirish' every time he opens his mouth. Admittedly, I now know that 'Zarin' shoul be pronounced as 'Zareen', but that is not enough to make up for all the cringing I am doing as I listen.Such a shame!