Ruby Miranda had never felt so mixed-up in her life. She hated Harry with an all-consuming bitterness, as the man who had spurned her love, and she hated herself just as bitterly for her own complete dependence on him? Harry Winton, the British manager of a tea estate in Assam leads a blessed life a job which gives him power over scores of men; a rambling bungalow perched on the edge of a cliff; and an unencumbered, solitary existence in the verdant reaches of the Assam highlands until the Anglo-Indian beauty, Ruby Miranda, enters his life. Beneath her charming demeanor, Ruby conceals a throbbing desire: to become a pucca memsahib to an Englishman. But when Harry goes on leave to England and returns with an English wife, his relationship with Ruby takes an ominous turn. An irreversible web of deceit, adultery and revenge begins, which culminates in a chilling denouement. One of Malgonkars most complex and layered novels, Combat of Shadows is a finely etched portrait of a society in flux.