'You must decide how rich you want to be,' she said, 'and adjust your conscience accordingly.'
A woman, the daughter of a courtesan, opens a club in Calcutta during the Raj. Through her tale, a portrait of the city and its inhabitants emerges as it contends with the Bengal Famine and the World War, with colonialism and racism. She has a son with an American soldier stationed Calcutta; he returns to the States and to his wife after the war but the three of them are reunited years later.