South Asian Partition Fiction in English: From Khushwant Singh to Amitav Ghosh (IIAS Publications)

In this thoughtful volume Rituparna Roy explores a significant cross-section of fiction about the partition of British India in 1947 on the eve of the Empire’s dissolution and the subsequent succession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971. The six novels selected for study—Train to Pakistan, A Bend in the Ganges, Ice-Candy-Man, Clear Light of Day, Midnight’s Children, and The Shadow Lines—follow a trajectory from primarily reporting the cataclysmic events to theorizing about them. Drawing from a wealth of historical material, Roy offers a sensitive analysis of these major literary works on the theme of partition.