THE VICTORIAN CLASSIC OF AMOUR IN THE NEAR EAST Drafted to help free the Afghan people from oppression by piratical warlords, Captain Charles Devereaux finds himself spending as much time in sexual skirmishes with the wives and daughters of his fellow officers as in what seem at first more dangerous skirmishes with the enemy. This uninhibited portrait of the sexual peccadilloes of Victorian British soldiers abroad has become recognized as one of the great classics of erotic literature. First Devereaux diddles with Elisabeth, a sex-starved wife whose husband is away at the front, and who initiates the young officer into practices he never dreamed of. Soon, he is in bed with both his commander's daughters in a series of epic couplings unrivaled in erotic literature. Then in a story-within-a-story, Devereaux receives a letter from his wife detailing how she lost her virginity long before they were married, giving a woman's view of the sexual hypocrisies of the men and women of conservative Victorians. Venus in India is a masterpiece of erotica not soon to be forgotten.