Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.

What the Body Remembers: A Novel

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

Out of the rich culture of India and the brutal drama of the 1947 Partition comes this lush and eloquent debut novel about two women married to the same man. Roop is a young girl whose mother has died and whose father is deep in debt. So she is elated to learn she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner in a union beneficial to both. For Sardaji’s first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him... (more)

Midnight's Children: A Novel

by Salman Rushdie

Introduction by Anita Desai

Kartography

by Kamila Shamsie

Raheen and her best friend, Karim, share an idyllic childhood in upper-class Karachi. Their parents were even once engaged to each others' partners until they rematched in what they call "the fiancée swap." But as adolescence distances the friends, Karim takes refuge in maps while Raheen searches for the secret behind her parents' exchange. What she uncovers reveals not just a family's but a country's turbulent... (more)

Jinnah India- Partition Independence

by Jaswant Singh

Contents: List of illustrations. Acknowledgements. Introduction: A complex opening. 1. India and Islam. 2. Jenabhai to Jinnah: the journey. 3. The Turbulent twenties. 4. Sharpening focus -- narrowing options. 5. A short decade -- a long end game. 6. Sunset of the empire -- post-dated cheque on a collapsing bank . 7. A war of succession -- diverging paths. 8. Stymied negotiations? 9. Mountbatten Viceroyalty: the... (more)

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire

by Alex Von Tunzelmann

An extraordinary story of romance, history, and divided loyalties—set against the backdrop of one of the most dramatic events of the twentieth century The stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947, liberated 400 million people from the British Empire. With the loss of India, its greatest colony, Britain ceased to be a superpower, and its king ceased to sign himself Rex Imperator. This defining moment of world... (more)

The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India

by Urvashi Butalia

The partition of India into two countries, India and Pakistan, caused one of the most massive human convulsions in history. Within the space of two months in 1947 more than twelve million people were displaced. A million died. More than seventy-five thousand women were abducted and raped. Countless children disappeared. Homes, villages, communities, families, and relationships were destroyed. Yet, more than half a... (more)

Pakistani Bride

by Bapsi Sidhwa

Zaitoon, an orphan, is adopted by Qasim, who has left the isolated hill town where he was born and made a home for the two of them in the glittering, decadent city of Lahore. As the years pass Qasim makes a fortune but grows increasingly nostalgic about his life in the mountains. Impulsively, he promises Zaitoon in marriage to a man of his tribe. But for Zaitoon, giving up the civilized city life she remembers to... (more)

Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

Teta, Mother, and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women

Teta, Mother, and Me: Three Generations of Arab Women

by Jean Said Makdisi

Jean Said Makdisi was born in Jerusalem and studied in Cairo and the United States. She is the author of Beirut Fragments: A War Memoir , a New York Times Notable Book . She lives in Beirut.

The Crooked Line (Women Writing the Middle East)

The Crooked Line (Women Writing the Middle East)

by Ismat Chughtai

In India's colonial past, in a time of political and social revolution, Ismat Chughtai masterfully unfolds her magna opus , The Crooked Line : the semi-autobiographical tale of a fiery-spirited, middle-class Muslim girl bent on exploring the shape and nature of consuming desire. Writing with the same honesty and passion as her scandalous short-story, "The Quilt," Chughtai exposes the complex relationships... (more)

Nadia, Captive of Hope: Memoir of an Arab Woman (Foremother Legacies)

Nadia, Captive of Hope: Memoir of an Arab Woman (Foremother Legacies)

by Fay Afaf Kanafani

This is the autobiography of Fay Afaf Kanafani, an Arab Muslim woman born in Beirut in 1918. Through telling the story of her difficult life as a woman in such a society and her struggles to free herself from her father, brother and father-in-law, it offers a feminist view of a people and culture.

FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHTLarry, and Dominique Lapierre Collins

FREEDOM AT MIDNIGHT

by Larry, and Dominique Lapierre Collins

Kashmir 1947: A Survivor's Story

by Krishna Mehta

Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate

Husband of a Fanatic: A Personal Journey Through India, Pakistan, Love, and Hate

by Amitava Kumar

A lyrical journey into the heart of hatred. "I went to my high school in Patna, India, and asked kids to write letters to children their own age across the border. Then, I visited my wife's high school in Karachi, Pakistan, and asked the kids to write letters in response. One student began with charming candor: "Dear Indians, First of all hello!! I am a Pakistani Muslim and I want to inform you that you are... (more)

Mottled Dawn; Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition

Mottled Dawn; Fifty Sketches and Stories of Partition

by Saadat Hasan Manto

Collection of major sketches, stories of partition, trans. from Urdu by Khalid Hasan. used widely as text

War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947-48C Dasgupta

War and Diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947-48

by C. Dasgupta

Based on declassified documents, the book throws new light on the roles played by Mountbatten and the British service chiefs in the Kashmir war of 1947-48 and explains why India took the Kashmir issue to the UN, why it did not carry the war into Pakistan and why it accepted a ceasefire. Examining archival material that has not been looked at previously and attempting an important reassessment of... (more)

Betrayed by the State

by Jyoti Grewal

AzadiChaman Nahal

Azadi

by Chaman Lal Nahal

My Country My LifeL.K. Advani, Foreward by Atal Bihari Vajpayee

My Country My Life

by L. K. Advani

My Country My Life is an extraordinary self-portrait of India s leading political personality - L.K. Advani. As an immigrant who was forced to abandon his beloved Sindh, which became a part of Pakistan after India was partitioned in 1947, on the basis of the communally inspired Two Nation Theory , Advani gives a poignant first-person account of that tragedy. With a career spanning six decades as a political... (more)

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Tags: partition

by Khushwant Singh