La bailarina y el inglés

The Ballerina and the Englishman

2009 Planeta Award Runner-Up

In The Ballerina and the Englishman we travel back in time to the death-throes of the British Raj in the midst of World War II, prior to India’s independence from Great Britain. Henry Masters, a British-born subject, is appointed, without any previous experience, Chief of Police of Jay Town. Somnambulist, in love with the ballerina Lalita Kadori and owner of “Henry II”, the weapon with which a crime is committed, he is witness to a sudden change of destiny in which his relationships only seems to go against him. He, thus, finds himself immersed in a conspiracy which can lands him in jail without him quite understanding why. Calderon’s precise use of language and his tightly-knit narrative skills and deep knowledge of the period, endow The Ballerina and the Englishman with awesome verisimilitude and make it a remarkably interesting and entertaining read.