LUCAS, Russell 1930-2002

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born January 11, 1930, in Bombay, India; died August 11, 2002. Author. Lucas was especially well known for writing novels and stories set in India during the British Raj. After spending his first years of childhood in India, Lucas moved to England with his mother after she divorced and married an Englishman. Too young to enlist during World War II, he nevertheless served in the British Army infantry from 1948 to 1949. Lucas returned to his beloved India, for which he always harbored fond memories, to work as a traveling salesman, but he soon returned to England and a lucrative job as a banking manager and treasury executive at Wauchall Motors to better support his family. He worked for this company from 1956 to 1987 before taking early retirement in order to write fiction. Lucas's short stories and novels, set during the Raj era, are characterized by their satire, black humor, and accounts of sexual exploits, often between Englishmen and Indians, and are flavored by the author's love of India and mistrust of the English occupational forces. His writings include the short story collection Evenings at Mongini's and Other Stories (1990), the novels Lip Service (1991) and The Ice Factory (1992), and the screenplay Keep Smiling (1991). He also contributed stories to anthologies and periodicals and won the 1995 Stand International Award for best short story at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature for the story "Space."

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

periodicals

Daily Telegraph (London, England), August 19, 2002. Times (London, England), September 9, 2002, p. 8.