"The Venus of Konpara" by John Masters, published by Harper & Brothers, 1960, stated First Edition. Harper printing code D-K [April 1960]. Dust jacket with original un-clipped price.

Dust jacket with original price on front flap [wear and edge creases]; hard boards, black cloth with silvery lettering on spine and silvery decoration on front board; 6" x 8.1/2"; endpapers are maps, 338 pages, very good condition.

The novel is set in the late nineteenth century, during the British Raj, and follows the adventures of a Rajput prince who is heir to a fictional kingdom based in Deori (roughly comparable to modern Chhattisgarh). He has just returned from his education in England. As a sign of his Anglicisation he plans to build a dam and a cricket pitch on disused land in Konpara, a backward and neglected part of his realm. However, when work begins, a fragment of an ancient statue is recovered. Such is its beauty and sensuousness that it is nicknamed the "Venus of Konpara". He decides to excavate the area in search of other remains. Meanwhile, he has been seduced by a Dravidian dancing girl, who becomes his live-in lover and who seems to have a mysterious control over the local people.

The prince's uncle, however, plans to displace him as successor to the throne and works in tandem with other mysterious hidden factions to disrupt the excavations. The local British administrator assists the prince, though with some reservations. The administrator is deeply resentful of his liberated wife, an artist who works in an avant-garde style similar to Manet. Her creativity disturbs his rigid and sexually repressed personality.

As excavations proceed it becomes clear that there are systematic attempts to misdirect the dig, and even to threaten the lives of the central characters, who are attacked by the local Gond tribesmen. The British administrator is drawn into the plot against the prince, and the dancing girl is abducted....

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