London, December 1944. Emy hates India. She lost her parents there, 16 years earlier. And here comes the past. By chance, Emy becomes aware of the diary of her mother, Amélia, a resigned young woman, barely out of the principles of Victorian England, and confronted, through a so-called immodest India, with the awakening of her own sensuality. January 1930. Amélia embarks with Emy on the first steamer bound for Bombay, to find there Thomas, her husband, captain in the army of the Indies in Khalapour, in Radjasthan. But the reunion is disappointing. Thomas seems to have changed, unless it is Amélia, who has been badly affected by the suffocating heat reigning in this region located on the edge of the Thar desert. Fortunately, there is Kenneth Lowther, a friend of Thomas, an atheist philosopher and tutor to royal children, who tries to explain to Amélia disconcerting India, its religion, its customs and the magnificence of its maharajahs. The young woman has a lot of trouble finding her bearings...
