From 1929 to 1997, Rumer Godden published novels, biographies, children's books, and poetry, including Black Narcissus, The Lady and the Unicorn, A Fugue in Time, and The River. In the first collection devoted to this important transnational writer, the essays uncover Godden's significance as a writer who experimented with narrative and interrogated her own uncertain position as an author representing such nomadic Others as gypsies or taking up the displacements brought about by international conflict

Introduction, Lucy Le-Guilcher, Phyllis B. Lassner; Part I Rumer Godden's India; Chapter 1 The View from the Middle: Godden and her Literary Landscape, Mary Grover; Chapter 2 "Far More Remote Than It Actually Is": Rumer Godden's Black Narcissus and 1930s Mountain Writing, Mark Rawlinson; Chapter 3 In Search of Rumer Godden's India, Gayathri Prabhu; Chapter 4 Questions of "Mixed Race" in The Lady and the Unicorn and The Peacock Spring, Elizabeth Maslen; Part II Godden and British Culture; Chapter 5 An Experiment with Narrative? Rumer Godden's A Fugue in Time, Victoria Stewart; Chapter 6 A Child's Perspective: The Reconstruction of the Domestic Sphere in The Dolls' House and Impunity Jane, Lucy Le-Guilcher; Chapter 7 Imagining Gypsies: Growing up in Gypsy, Gypsy and The Diddakoi, Rod Mengham; Chapter 8 China Court: Rumer Godden's Epic of the English Novel, Phyllis Lassner; Part III Sexuality and Longing; Chapter 9 Childhood, Longing, Sexuality, Violence and Sacrifice in Rumer Godden's The River, An Episode of Sparrows and The Greengage Summer, Philip Tew; Chapter 10 Sweetness and Darkness: Realism in Rumer Godden's Novels, Tessa Hadley; Part IV Rumer Godden's Life and Career; Chapter 11 Rumer Godden: A Sense of Performance and Poetry, Anne Harvey; Chapter 12 "A Born Storyteller": Clips from the Interviews, Clare Jenkins; Chapter 13 "Sometimes": A Daughter's Reflections, Jane Murray Flutter;