The Moonstone

The story

A huge yellow diamond, taken from a temple in India during a battle, is left to Rachel Verinder on her eighteenth birthday. That same night it disappears from her room.

Sergeant Cuff, a detective who loves roses, investigates. Every servant and guest is a suspect, and the truth comes out only through the written accounts of many different narrators.

Themes: guilt and suspicion, class, colonial plunder, truth and testimony.

Why it's a good book for language learners

The story is told by several narrators, each with a very different voice: a talkative old steward, a religious busybody, a lawyer, a doctor. That makes it a fantastic way to hear many styles of English in one book.

What you'll practise

• Narrative voice and register
• Vocabulary of crime and investigation
• Formal Victorian letters
• Making deductions: must have, can't have, might have

Did you know?

T. S. Eliot called The Moonstone “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels”.

The PageWalker adventure

In the adventure you investigate the theft yourself — accuse the wrong person and the trail goes cold. The first page is free to play in your browser, and the adventure is available in 13 languages with click-to-translate.

The Moonstone in other languages

• EnglishThe Moonstone
• العربيةحجر القمر
• DeutschDer Monddiamant
• EspañolLa Piedra Lunar
• FrançaisLa Pierre de lune
• हिन्दीद मूनस्टोन
• ItalianoLa Pietra di Luna
• 日本語月長石
• 한국어월장석
• PortuguêsA Pedra da Lua
• РусскийЛунный камень
• TürkçeAytaşı
• 简体中文月亮宝石