Bhowani Junction is a 1952 novel by John Masters, which became the basis of a successful 1956 film. It is set amidst the turbulence of the British withdrawal from India.

The film was directed by George Cukor, and starred Ava Gardner as Victoria Jones, an Anglo-Indian nurse in the British Army, and Stewart Granger as Colonel Rodney Savage, a British army officer.

The book is set in 1947, shortly before India achieved independence. Victoria is the mixed-race child of a railway worker. Patrick, also an Anglo-Indian, considers himself her boyfriend, but her feelings towards him are platonic. In self-defence, Victoria kills an English officer who has attempted to rape her, and is helped to avoid detection by an Indian, Ranjit, who hopes to marry her. She then becomes involved in an exercise to capture a local terrorist, along with her commanding officer, Rodney Savage, with whom she has an affair.

The main difference between the book and the film is that Patrick dies at the end of the film, but survives in the novel.

External links

• IMDb entry