At first glance, the eccentric inhabitants of Durbar Court - a rambling home on the south coast of England - are mired in the past like flies in aspic. They're presided over by Dolly Hunter-Jones, who attempts to preserve the dream of her long-dead husband, Glyn: 'a shrine to imperialism', the excesses of the Raj transplanted into a corner of East Sussex.

On the walls hang the mirrors of Rajputana, which reflect the bizarre anachronism of this microcosm, the rooms packed with relics of another era, and the retinue of ageing Indian factotums shuffling around with trays. 'Age crept through the house like a parasitic growth. Any gesture of resistance was futile.'

But Glyn Jones' dream will soon prove too heavy a burden for Durbar Court's inhabitants, most of whom, despite outward appearances, are hungry for change and a release from the past.

The Age of Elephants is richly peopled with an array of larger-than-life characters. Among them, the feisty Leila Chandra, slowly dying from a thwarted love; Ruth Chatterjee, a recent immigrant who, along with her intellectual nephew Ravi Shapoor, is a fierce warrior against anti-Indian prejudice; the colonel, Edward 'Teddy' Reginald Gascoynge, whose tired air of nobility rests upon him 'like a rumpled tiger skin'; and Kalil, the handsome architectural student who spends his summers working in the garden.

It's into this setting that the Anglo-Indian divorcee Tom Swain and his two young daughters stumble. Thrust back into a landscape resembling that of his Indian childhood, Tom is forced to face the demons of his past. Coaxing him through the memories of a fraught childhood is Clare Truscott, an anthropologist and young widow.

Tom's journey to peace will take him back to India, and will be embodied by a surprise gift from his father's former manservant, Kuti Lal.

The novel is rich in stories within stories. Who can resist the tale (with two endings) of Padmi Gupta's ill-fated motoring tour, where the sudden death of her Aunt Violet means the corpse must be conveyed on the roof of a Morris Minor through pre-monsoon Rajasthan.

Ravi Shapoor's comment on an ageing uncle - 'At least I don't have to resort to vanity press' - is a delightful piece of self-parody by the self-published Hong Kong author. According to the book's jacket, author Peter Moss 'witnessed the end of Empire in India, Malaya and Hong Kong', and drew 'heavily upon childhood memories' to write The Age of Elephants. Perhaps the author has verbalised some reservations about doing so in the scene where Tom destroys his manuscripts.

The Age of Elephants speaks of the absurdity of selective memory and of the catharsis that comes from confronting the past head-on and using its lessons to move on. 'Turning into the main road, he was half inclined to pause so he could memorise afresh the already familiar landmarks. As if he couldn't be entirely certain he would find that gate again.'