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Cracking India, Bapsi Sidhwa
Bapsi Sidhwa

Cracking India

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A New York Times Notable Book: A girl’s happy home life is suddenly disrupted by the 1947 Partition of India in this “multifaceted jewel of a novel” (Houston Chronicle).
Young Lenny Sethi is kept out of school because she suffers from polio. She spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the many admirers that Ayah draws. It is in the company of these working-class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, religious intolerance, and the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition.
As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her. Lenny enjoys a happy, privileged life in Lahore, but the kidnapping of her beloved Ayah signals a dramatic change. Soon Lenny’s world erupts in religious, ethnic, and racial violence. In this tale from “Pakistan’s finest English-language novelist” (TheNew York Times Book Review), the profound upheaval that was the 1947 Partition of India is dramatically revealed through the story of one young girl, whose account of her experience proves by turns insightful, funny, and heartbreaking.
“Lenny’s honesty is compelling . . . She is alternately thrilled and frightened by the events she dutifully records, and so, in the end, is the reader.” —Publishers Weekly
“Much has been written about the holocaust that followed the Partition of India in 1947, but seldom has that story been told as touchingly, as convincingly, or as horrifyingly as it has been by novelist Bapsi Sidhwa.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer
“Lenny dramatizes the textures of multicultural Indian life, with its summer trips to the Himalayan foothills, dinner parties, visits from the ice-candy man, and, increasingly, hints of Hindu-Muslim trouble . . . both realistic and magically evocative.” —Kirkus Reviews
“A mysterious, wonderful novel.” —The Washington Post
Previously published under the title Ice-Candy Man
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This book is currently unavailable
391 printed pages
Original publication
2010
Publication year
2010
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  • محمدshared an impression16 days ago
    👍Worth reading

Quotes

  • محمدhas quoted16 days ago
    And I chant: “Ayah! Ayah! Ayah! Ayah!” until my heart pounds with the chant and the children on the roof picking it up shout with all their heart: “Ayah! Ayah! Ayah! Ayah!” and our chant flows into the pulse of the women below, and the women on the roof, and they beat their breasts and cry: “Hai! Hai! Hai! Hai!” reflecting the history of their cumulative sorrows and the sorrows of their Muslim, Hindu, Sikh and Rajput great-grandmothers who burnt themselves alive rather than surrender their honor to the invading hordes besieging their ancestral fortresses.
  • محمدhas quoted16 days ago
    “I am past that,” says Mumtaz. “I’m not alive.”
  • محمدhas quoted16 days ago
    “Oh, I know! You always have your way... ”
    “Then why are you wasting my time?”
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