Beating the Air follows a journey from England to British India, focusing on a young couple’s first steps into a distant life it will shape them to inhabit.

Rich in travel detail and social observation, the story blends the lure of art, the tension of empire, and the quiet drama of personal connections made aboard a long voyage.

As the Percevals and their companions move from Venice to the Suez path and into the unfamiliar world of the Indian Civil Service, readers glimpse how class, duty, and curiosity collide with hope and fear. The narrative foregrounds character, mood, and the small moments that signal larger shifts in fortune and belonging.

A shipboard world of mixed cultures and formal expectations.
Encounters with officials, missionaries, and locals that reveal tensions of empire.
The pull between personal wishes and professional duty in distant lands.
A roomier, vivid sense of travel, landscapes, and the slow pace of building a new life.

Ideal for readers who enjoy period fiction that centers on character, social manners, and the subtleties of cross-cultural life during the colonial era.

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We first started out as ?The Paperback Exchange,? a chain of physical bookstores where we would part exchange your beloved books for new stories to transport you to faraway places. However, as shopping started to evolve to online shops and marketplaces, we bid our stores goodbye to become ?PBShop.? This transition has only allowed us to blossom as we now ship thousands of titles to book lovers across the globe. We pride ourselves in being a community of local book lovers which allows our passion and devotion to shine in everything we do. In 2020 we not only celebrated our 20th birthday but our 1st birthday as being completely employee owned after becoming an E.O.T in September 2019. We are proud to be different and embrace standing apart on a book mountain by working from a virtual inventory which allows us to provide thousands of books that may be difficult to get for your bookshelf or your studies. Working with a number of different suppliers allows us to explore other avenues such as puzzles, sheet music and even stationery so we really do have something for everyone. Life is about being versatile in all realms of existence. If this is your first visit or you are a returning customer, we would like to welcome you to the PBShop family, for there is no friend as loyal as a book. We are a company who put our customers at the centre of everything we do as we understand the importance of reading because once you learn to read, you will forever be free. There are a whole lot of things in this world of ours that we are yet to explore, which is why we will forever inspire curious minds.

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