Cracking India
by Bapsi Sidhwa
“India is going to be broken. Can you break a country? And what
happens if they break it where our house is?” As the young daughter of
an affluent Parsee family in Lahore, Lenny—who is crippled by polio—is
keenly observant of the city’s astonishing diversity. As Lahore
descends into sectarian violence due to the partition of India and
Pakistan in 1947, Lenny’s innocence is lost, and with it, the fragile
unity of the subcontinent.
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Bapsi Sidhwa
Author's Bio:Born
in Karachi and raised in Lahore, Bapsi Sidhwa has been lauded
as Pakistan’s finest novelist. Sidhwa is the author
of four novels: The Bride, Crow Eaters, An American Brat, and Cracking
India which was made into the
award-winning film Earth by Indian director Deepa Mehta in 1999. Sidhwa
was the recipient the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest honor in the
arts in 1991, and was inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame in
2000. She has been awarded the National Endowment for the Arts
Fellowship, the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, and the
Bunting Fellowship from Radcliffe, amongst other honors. She
now resides with her husband in Houston, Texas.
Awards:A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year
American
Library Association Notable Book nomination
The New York Public
Library's “Books for Young Readers”
German Liberatur Prize for Fiction Quotes:“A memorable book, one that confirms [Sidhwa's] reputation as Pakistan's finest English-language novelist.”—New York Times Book Review
“The spirited daughter of an affluent Parsee family narrates the
story of the cracking of India, as she witnesses Muslims, Hindus,
Christians, Parsees, and Sikhs fight for their land and their lives.”—London Review of Books
"[Sidhwa] has told a sweet and amusing tale filled with the worst
atrocities imaginable; she has concocted a girlishly romantic love
story which is driven by the most militant feminism; above all, she has
turned her gaze upon the domestic comedy of a Pakistani family in the
1940s and somehow managed to evoke the great political upheavals of the
age."—Washington Post Book World
"Sidhwa's novel Cracking India is on of the finest responses made to the horror of the division of the subcontinent.”—Salman Rushdie, The New Yorker
“Added a new dimension culturally and conceptually. Intrigued and
challenged the students as well as their teacher. . . It's a unique
voice from a territory hardly known to Western readers.”—Edyta
Oczkowicz, Lehigh University, Pennsylvaina
“Damned good novel.... [The students] loved it and were enraged by a
history they had barely heard about.”—David Mason, Moorhead State
University, Minnesota
“A very powerful novel, illustrates how larger political events
could have an influence at the very personal level.”—Douglas Haynes,
Dartmouth College, New Hampshire
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An American Brat
In American Brat, Bapsi Sidhwa allows us to see Americans from the point of view of newcomers — an occasionally unsettling perspective — while gently illuminating the potentially destructive influence of fundamentalism on a culture and its people. more...
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The Crow Eaters
Loading his pregnant wife, infant daughter, and widowed mother-in-law into a bullock cart, Faredoon Junglewalla leaves his ancestral village in the forests of central India for the bustling city of Lahore. more...
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Price:
$ 15.95
Binding: Paper
Availability In Stock: 85
immediately
Publisher: Milkweed Editions
Published: 1992
Size: 5 1/2 x 8 1/2
Edition: 2nd
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 296
ISBN: 9781571310484
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