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The Broken Road
It was the Road which caused the trouble. It usually is the road. That and a reigning prince who was declared by his uncle secretly to have sold his country to the British, and a half-crazed priest from out beyond the borders of Afghanistan, who sat on a slab of stone by the river-bank and preached a djehad. But above all it was the road-Linforth's road. It came winding down from the passes, over slopes of shale; it was built with wooden galleries along the precipitous sides of cliffs; it snaked treacherously further and further across the rich valley of Chiltistan towards the Hindu Kush, until the people of that valley could endure it no longer. Then suddenly from Peshawur the wires began to flash their quiet and ominous messages.
380 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1907
10 people are currently reading
48 people want to read
About the author
A.E.W. Mason
217 books51 followersMajor Alfred Edward Woodley Mason (7 May 1865 Dulwich, London - 22 November 1948 London) was a British author and politician. He is best remembered for his 1902 novel The Four Feathers.
He studied at Dulwich College and graduated from Trinity College, Oxford in 1888. He was a contemporary of fellow Liberal Anthony Hope, who went on to write the adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda.
His first novel, A Romance of Wastdale, was published in 1895. He was the author of more than 20 books, including At The Villa Rose (1910), a mystery novel in which he introduced his French detective, Inspector Hanaud. His best-known book is The Four Feathers, which has been made into several films. Many consider it his masterpiece. Other books are The House of the Arrow (1924), No Other Tiger (1927), The Prisoner in the Opal (1929) and Fire Over England (1937).
He studied at Dulwich College and graduated from Trinity College, Oxford in 1888. He was a contemporary of fellow Liberal Anthony Hope, who went on to write the adventure novel The Prisoner of Zenda.
His first novel, A Romance of Wastdale, was published in 1895. He was the author of more than 20 books, including At The Villa Rose (1910), a mystery novel in which he introduced his French detective, Inspector Hanaud. His best-known book is The Four Feathers, which has been made into several films. Many consider it his masterpiece. Other books are The House of the Arrow (1924), No Other Tiger (1927), The Prisoner in the Opal (1929) and Fire Over England (1937).
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 31, 2026
AEW Mason should really fall outside my particular area of interest, as he’s not a woman writer and didn’t live locally.
He’s on my shelf simply because I enjoy his novels so much and I always enjoy a little heart-skip when I see his name on the spine of an old book. I realise I must have read about ten of his novels, although I haven’t reviewed any before. I don’t know why that is.
This is an early-ish book of his from 1907 (a first edition, no less, for the princely sum of £3, which probably tells you everything about poor Mr Mason’s current literary standing). He was hugely popular during his lifetime and published bestsellers from the 1890s all the way through to the 1940s.
The Broken Road of the title is the grand project to connect the provinces beyond the North West Frontier into the power network of British India - “from the mountains to the plains”. The road has tremendous economic, military and strategic potential both for the British colonial powers at one end and for the mountain warlords at the other.
But the road is more than just a piece of impressive engineering. It’s also a symbol, a dream, an obsession and perhaps most importantly, a metaphor for displacement, disillusionment and regret.
AEW Mason’s story about the attempt to complete the road is far too complicated for me to attempt to summarise. It takes place over two generations and stretches from the ancient fortresses of the Himalayas to the rolling Sussex Downs, from the grand reception halls of the Viceroy to the glaciers of the Alps.
There’s a subplot involving a female Society jewel-thief (the beautiful but vain and shallow Violet Oliver) who sets in motion the tragic rift in the bond of friendship between two bosom pals. And it’s also a thoughtful and searching critique of aspects of British rule in India, which I hadn’t expected.
AEW Mason himself seems rather like a character from his own adventure yarns. After public school and Oxford, he was variously an actor on the London stage, a decorated hero in the Fist World War and a spy in the intelligence service posted to far-off climes.
These quixotic experiences of his give his writing a real freshness and authenticity. He knows what he’s talking about and writes with expertise and a sharp eye. Diverse things I learnt in the novel included, for example, that:
- In Indian warfare a “sangar” is a dug-out or entrenchment, providing cover for a gun emplacement (p15).
- Chorus girls wined and dined at The Savoy were more euphemistically referred to as “coryphées” (p34).
- Ice can be more treacherous than snow for mountain climbers (p61).
- Polo was originally played as a training exercise by warriors from the Himalayas before it became a posh Anglo-Indian sport (p111).
- Sir John Lawrence who rose to the highest office as Viceroy of India in the 1860s retired back home to England where he became a school governor - a job that he said gave him more satisfaction than governing British India (p147).
- Under local law a boy from the age of fourteen “had the right to dispose of his widowed mother in second marriage as he saw fit, and for the best price he could obtain” (p187).
- A “Durbar” (p337) is a very grand official gathering of the Indian aristocracy and the most senior British ruling class.
It would be easy to condemn AEW Mason as a privileged product of the colonial system. He was an upper-middle class Victorian gent and his writing of course reflects the attitudes and prejudices of the times he lived in. But this doesn’t mean we should automatically condemn him as a bigot and racist.
On the contrary, I was surprised and intrigued to read things in the novel that suggested unusual sensitivity and nuance on his part. He takes a brave and unorthodox stance in:
- Challenging the official policy of educating Indian princes as English gentlemen, only then to return them to India where they became “strangers among their own folk” (p33).
- Criticising the oppressive role played by the State Resident - a senior British civil servant - in controlling and containing the local aristocracy (p59).
- Presenting positively the solemn bond, sworn as “a kind of ritual” (p59), between two boys of different races: “Nothing must come between us. Nothing to hinder what we shall do together” (p62).
- Mocking the narrow-minded stupidity and arrogance of bigots like Colonel Fitzwarren whose “one idea of the Indian Peninsula was a huge tiger waiting somewhere in a jungle to be shot” (p66).
- Highlighting Violet Oliver’s sly racism when she says of Shere Ali that “you could hardly tell that he was not English” with his “colour no darker than many a sunburnt Englishman wears every August” (p79).
- Recording the ugly anti-semitism of the posh English boys at the Calcutta boxing match (“This fellow’s a Jew. Look at his face” p202).
- Showing the disrespectful behaviour of the English visiting the Mosque who “were laughing, talking. Some of them had bought sandwiches and were eating their lunch. Others were taking photographs waiting for the show to begin” (p237).
- Exposing the shocking truth that the Victoria Cross couldn’t be awarded to Indians, even for the most exceptional acts of bravery and self-sacrifice (p119).
AEW Mason remained single all his life - “a confirmed bachelor” as the coded expression used to say, with a wink-and-a-nod to those interested in deciphering the reality under the surface. Of course, he wasn’t gay in our terms. But he lived in a predominantly male environment (boys’ boarding school, men’s college, active service and gentlemen’s clubs) where male friendships could be romantic and intense.
And hiding there in plain sight in the novel are some beautiful passages tinged with homo-erotic lyricism:
- “I was dining eighteen months ago at the mess at Chatham. And that boy’s face came out of the crowd and took my eyes and my imagination too. You know, perhaps, how that happens at times” (p71).
- “Boys will get into trouble, you know. It is their nature to. And sometimes a man may be of use in putting things straight” (p39).
- “The two men had met some fifteen years ago for the first time, in Peshawar, and on that first meeting some subtle chord of sympathy had drawn them together” (p156).
- “In the Eton and Oxford days he had given and given and given so much of himself to Shere Ali that he could not now lightly and easily lose him altogether out of his life” (p266).
AEW Mason’s writing is always beautiful with a lucid grace and simple elegance. Sentences I especially enjoyed included:
- “He had no sense of humour and no general information. He was, therefore, of no assistance at a dinner-party” (p2).
- “The young Khan had a passion for things English. The bicycle and the camera were signs of it. Unwise men had applauded his enlightenment” (p14).
- “He could never quite be sure whether it was or was not to Mrs Oliver’s credit that her looks made so powerful an appeal to the chivalry of young men” p66).
- “Colonel Dewes gave himself up to reflection. He sounded the obscurities of his mind. It was a practice to which he was not accustomed” (p144).
- “Was it true that there was no change but the change from the young woman to the old one, from enthusiasm to acquiescence?” (p227).
- “It was a smile rather of tolerance, and almost of regret - the smile of a man who was well accustomed to seeing the flowers and decorative things of life wither over quickly” (p297).
I’d expected a classic adventure yarn full of Edwardian certainty and chutzpah. Instead it turned out to be a downbeat tale marked by ambiguity, disillusionment and regret. There’s no heroic rescue or grand achievement. By the end of the story, the road is still unfinished and the main characters are left lonely, disappointed, dissatisfied or embittered. I found the novel thoughtful, sad and surprisingly prophetic.
On a happier final note, it’s claimed that as a result of King Edward VII reading this story, the rules were overhauled to enable the Victoria Cross to be awarded to Indian soldiers. Such is the power of the novel!
The King subsequently put AEW Mason forward for a Knighthood. But the author apparently turned down this honour, as well as many others. I find that kind of modesty rather touching.
He’s on my shelf simply because I enjoy his novels so much and I always enjoy a little heart-skip when I see his name on the spine of an old book. I realise I must have read about ten of his novels, although I haven’t reviewed any before. I don’t know why that is.
This is an early-ish book of his from 1907 (a first edition, no less, for the princely sum of £3, which probably tells you everything about poor Mr Mason’s current literary standing). He was hugely popular during his lifetime and published bestsellers from the 1890s all the way through to the 1940s.
The Broken Road of the title is the grand project to connect the provinces beyond the North West Frontier into the power network of British India - “from the mountains to the plains”. The road has tremendous economic, military and strategic potential both for the British colonial powers at one end and for the mountain warlords at the other.
But the road is more than just a piece of impressive engineering. It’s also a symbol, a dream, an obsession and perhaps most importantly, a metaphor for displacement, disillusionment and regret.
AEW Mason’s story about the attempt to complete the road is far too complicated for me to attempt to summarise. It takes place over two generations and stretches from the ancient fortresses of the Himalayas to the rolling Sussex Downs, from the grand reception halls of the Viceroy to the glaciers of the Alps.
There’s a subplot involving a female Society jewel-thief (the beautiful but vain and shallow Violet Oliver) who sets in motion the tragic rift in the bond of friendship between two bosom pals. And it’s also a thoughtful and searching critique of aspects of British rule in India, which I hadn’t expected.
AEW Mason himself seems rather like a character from his own adventure yarns. After public school and Oxford, he was variously an actor on the London stage, a decorated hero in the Fist World War and a spy in the intelligence service posted to far-off climes.
These quixotic experiences of his give his writing a real freshness and authenticity. He knows what he’s talking about and writes with expertise and a sharp eye. Diverse things I learnt in the novel included, for example, that:
- In Indian warfare a “sangar” is a dug-out or entrenchment, providing cover for a gun emplacement (p15).
- Chorus girls wined and dined at The Savoy were more euphemistically referred to as “coryphées” (p34).
- Ice can be more treacherous than snow for mountain climbers (p61).
- Polo was originally played as a training exercise by warriors from the Himalayas before it became a posh Anglo-Indian sport (p111).
- Sir John Lawrence who rose to the highest office as Viceroy of India in the 1860s retired back home to England where he became a school governor - a job that he said gave him more satisfaction than governing British India (p147).
- Under local law a boy from the age of fourteen “had the right to dispose of his widowed mother in second marriage as he saw fit, and for the best price he could obtain” (p187).
- A “Durbar” (p337) is a very grand official gathering of the Indian aristocracy and the most senior British ruling class.
It would be easy to condemn AEW Mason as a privileged product of the colonial system. He was an upper-middle class Victorian gent and his writing of course reflects the attitudes and prejudices of the times he lived in. But this doesn’t mean we should automatically condemn him as a bigot and racist.
On the contrary, I was surprised and intrigued to read things in the novel that suggested unusual sensitivity and nuance on his part. He takes a brave and unorthodox stance in:
- Challenging the official policy of educating Indian princes as English gentlemen, only then to return them to India where they became “strangers among their own folk” (p33).
- Criticising the oppressive role played by the State Resident - a senior British civil servant - in controlling and containing the local aristocracy (p59).
- Presenting positively the solemn bond, sworn as “a kind of ritual” (p59), between two boys of different races: “Nothing must come between us. Nothing to hinder what we shall do together” (p62).
- Mocking the narrow-minded stupidity and arrogance of bigots like Colonel Fitzwarren whose “one idea of the Indian Peninsula was a huge tiger waiting somewhere in a jungle to be shot” (p66).
- Highlighting Violet Oliver’s sly racism when she says of Shere Ali that “you could hardly tell that he was not English” with his “colour no darker than many a sunburnt Englishman wears every August” (p79).
- Recording the ugly anti-semitism of the posh English boys at the Calcutta boxing match (“This fellow’s a Jew. Look at his face” p202).
- Showing the disrespectful behaviour of the English visiting the Mosque who “were laughing, talking. Some of them had bought sandwiches and were eating their lunch. Others were taking photographs waiting for the show to begin” (p237).
- Exposing the shocking truth that the Victoria Cross couldn’t be awarded to Indians, even for the most exceptional acts of bravery and self-sacrifice (p119).
AEW Mason remained single all his life - “a confirmed bachelor” as the coded expression used to say, with a wink-and-a-nod to those interested in deciphering the reality under the surface. Of course, he wasn’t gay in our terms. But he lived in a predominantly male environment (boys’ boarding school, men’s college, active service and gentlemen’s clubs) where male friendships could be romantic and intense.
And hiding there in plain sight in the novel are some beautiful passages tinged with homo-erotic lyricism:
- “I was dining eighteen months ago at the mess at Chatham. And that boy’s face came out of the crowd and took my eyes and my imagination too. You know, perhaps, how that happens at times” (p71).
- “Boys will get into trouble, you know. It is their nature to. And sometimes a man may be of use in putting things straight” (p39).
- “The two men had met some fifteen years ago for the first time, in Peshawar, and on that first meeting some subtle chord of sympathy had drawn them together” (p156).
- “In the Eton and Oxford days he had given and given and given so much of himself to Shere Ali that he could not now lightly and easily lose him altogether out of his life” (p266).
AEW Mason’s writing is always beautiful with a lucid grace and simple elegance. Sentences I especially enjoyed included:
- “He had no sense of humour and no general information. He was, therefore, of no assistance at a dinner-party” (p2).
- “The young Khan had a passion for things English. The bicycle and the camera were signs of it. Unwise men had applauded his enlightenment” (p14).
- “He could never quite be sure whether it was or was not to Mrs Oliver’s credit that her looks made so powerful an appeal to the chivalry of young men” p66).
- “Colonel Dewes gave himself up to reflection. He sounded the obscurities of his mind. It was a practice to which he was not accustomed” (p144).
- “Was it true that there was no change but the change from the young woman to the old one, from enthusiasm to acquiescence?” (p227).
- “It was a smile rather of tolerance, and almost of regret - the smile of a man who was well accustomed to seeing the flowers and decorative things of life wither over quickly” (p297).
I’d expected a classic adventure yarn full of Edwardian certainty and chutzpah. Instead it turned out to be a downbeat tale marked by ambiguity, disillusionment and regret. There’s no heroic rescue or grand achievement. By the end of the story, the road is still unfinished and the main characters are left lonely, disappointed, dissatisfied or embittered. I found the novel thoughtful, sad and surprisingly prophetic.
On a happier final note, it’s claimed that as a result of King Edward VII reading this story, the rules were overhauled to enable the Victoria Cross to be awarded to Indian soldiers. Such is the power of the novel!
The King subsequently put AEW Mason forward for a Knighthood. But the author apparently turned down this honour, as well as many others. I find that kind of modesty rather touching.
January 14, 2019
The Broken Road was sold to me as adventure fiction, but I’m not sure that’s a comfortable label for it to carry. It certainly bears a romantic air that fits the name, and there are moments which are ‘adventurous’, for lack of a better word, but overall there is no single adventure running through it. The hero, if he is one, does very little, while the villain is closer to an antihero in many respects, and is arguably the most sympathetic character for at least a portion of the book. Neither of them ‘get the girl’, who is clearly better off without them, and vice versa – although the ‘villain’ is ruined in figuring that out. Besides a somewhat illusory kidnap attempt, there is very little danger encountered and almost no hardships endured besides the psychological ones suffered by the erstwhile villain.
It starts well enough as an adventure, there’s a siege and a tough-as-nuts hero, but he dies of overexertion and the siege ends, and it’s all a prologue anyway. There’s the expected siege towards the end of the book, but it never happens, and the characters involved are asides, included more for completeness in the narrative than anything else. The war, such as it is, and the hunt for a fugitive across a remote alien land, are dealt with in summation, the latter in a portion of dialogue years after the event. The book is not about adventurous undertakings.
Instead, The Broken Road, is a novel about two young men filled with ideals, who learn through bitter experience that the world simply does not work the way they dreamed. That the main character, in terms of taking up most of the stage, is an Indian prince sent away to England to learn at Eton, gives the novel its central position as a colonial fiction. It is he who, if this were an adventure novel, would be the villain, and he is described as becoming one as events progress, but he is more pathetic in the end than villainous. A mere cog in the wheels of other people’s plans.
It is his progression from proud Oxford graduate who sees himself as White and better than his own people, to religious fanatic avowed to drive the English out of Chiltistan, his fictional home province, and ultimately to sorry drunk removed from any sense of home or identity he once had, that is the centre of the work.
There is much that can be made and said of the book in terms of colonialism and race, but the largely metaphorical nature of the three central characters and the Road itself means there’s no chance of applying a definitive reading on the book – thank goodness. It can be read as sympathetic to subject nations, or not. For my part, it seemed somewhere in the middle. That the British had a position of cultural superiority is not questioned, but that they should therefore force their will upon their supposed subjects – to ‘better’ them – is shown to be ill-fated at best.
Overall, despite some apparent sympathy for the ‘villain’, the sense of English superiority is too strong, and its surrounding narrative too weak, for this to escape the gravity of being ‘colonial’. That said, it is a fascinating read, with strong characters that can give much thought to an open-minded reader.
It starts well enough as an adventure, there’s a siege and a tough-as-nuts hero, but he dies of overexertion and the siege ends, and it’s all a prologue anyway. There’s the expected siege towards the end of the book, but it never happens, and the characters involved are asides, included more for completeness in the narrative than anything else. The war, such as it is, and the hunt for a fugitive across a remote alien land, are dealt with in summation, the latter in a portion of dialogue years after the event. The book is not about adventurous undertakings.
Instead, The Broken Road, is a novel about two young men filled with ideals, who learn through bitter experience that the world simply does not work the way they dreamed. That the main character, in terms of taking up most of the stage, is an Indian prince sent away to England to learn at Eton, gives the novel its central position as a colonial fiction. It is he who, if this were an adventure novel, would be the villain, and he is described as becoming one as events progress, but he is more pathetic in the end than villainous. A mere cog in the wheels of other people’s plans.
It is his progression from proud Oxford graduate who sees himself as White and better than his own people, to religious fanatic avowed to drive the English out of Chiltistan, his fictional home province, and ultimately to sorry drunk removed from any sense of home or identity he once had, that is the centre of the work.
There is much that can be made and said of the book in terms of colonialism and race, but the largely metaphorical nature of the three central characters and the Road itself means there’s no chance of applying a definitive reading on the book – thank goodness. It can be read as sympathetic to subject nations, or not. For my part, it seemed somewhere in the middle. That the British had a position of cultural superiority is not questioned, but that they should therefore force their will upon their supposed subjects – to ‘better’ them – is shown to be ill-fated at best.
Overall, despite some apparent sympathy for the ‘villain’, the sense of English superiority is too strong, and its surrounding narrative too weak, for this to escape the gravity of being ‘colonial’. That said, it is a fascinating read, with strong characters that can give much thought to an open-minded reader.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 19, 2015
Beautifully written, and very affecting.
Unfortunately, I cannot approve of the sentiment of the novel (or its author)- that the native Indians would have been better left unfriended and uneducated, without the scraps of affection tossed towards them, because ultimately, it simply made them greedy for more!
That is the message I got from the book.
********************************
Notes from Jan 14,2007:
The contrast between Shere Ali's fate and the hopes with which he had set out was shocking enough. Yet even in his case so very little had turned the scale. Between the fulfillment of his hopes and the great failure what was there? If he had been sent to Ajmere instead of to England, if he and Linforth had not crossed the Meije to La Grave in Dauphiné, if a necklace of pearls he had offered had not been accepted-- very likely at this very moment he might be reigning in Chiltistan, trusted and supported by the Indian Government, a helpful friend gratefully recognised. To Linforth's thinking it was only "just not" with Shere Ali, too.
Note: The reason I have included this is because I feel this little para needs some little thought to itself, no? Would that have been good enough? And, for whom??
Unfortunately, I cannot approve of the sentiment of the novel (or its author)- that the native Indians would have been better left unfriended and uneducated, without the scraps of affection tossed towards them, because ultimately, it simply made them greedy for more!
That is the message I got from the book.
********************************
Notes from Jan 14,2007:
The contrast between Shere Ali's fate and the hopes with which he had set out was shocking enough. Yet even in his case so very little had turned the scale. Between the fulfillment of his hopes and the great failure what was there? If he had been sent to Ajmere instead of to England, if he and Linforth had not crossed the Meije to La Grave in Dauphiné, if a necklace of pearls he had offered had not been accepted-- very likely at this very moment he might be reigning in Chiltistan, trusted and supported by the Indian Government, a helpful friend gratefully recognised. To Linforth's thinking it was only "just not" with Shere Ali, too.
Note: The reason I have included this is because I feel this little para needs some little thought to itself, no? Would that have been good enough? And, for whom??
May 19, 2010
A moving, engrossing book set in India when it was an English colony, The Broken Road documents the tragic consequences of bigotry, domination, and misunderstanding for cultures and for a few men in particular. A prince of Chiltistan is sent to England to be educated. But when he returns to his native land, he discovers that the world he has come to love is no longer open to him. The woman he loves is out of reach. His former boyhood friend becomes his enemy.
Mason is a master at description and a keen observer and describer of human emotions and relationships.
Mason is a master at description and a keen observer and describer of human emotions and relationships.
March 8, 2015
Poignant story of the days of the British Raj. Much less melodramatic than I expected for a book written in the early 1900s, it tells of an Indian man and several English men and women affected by a project to build a road in northern India. It speaks of colonialism, displacement, pride. It left me with much to ponder.
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November 22, 2015Free download available at Project Gutenberg.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews