Partitions

Taking India's 1947 Partition as its point of departure, the novel stages an imaginary tribunal in which centuries and continents meet. Presiding is a nameless adeeb, a writer, who hears the accused and their victims. In the dock stand emperors, conquerors and statesmen, among them Babur and Aurangzeb, Cortés, Mountbatten, Hitler and Saddam Hussein, alongside zealots and even gods of myth, all charged with splitting lands and peoples and sowing lasting hatred. Witnesses come from sites of slaughter and injustice from Kurukshetra to Hiroshima and Bosnia. Through these hearings the book questions how history is made and recorded, and what religion and nationalism have to do with communal violence.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

361 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Politics (assigned by AI)

First published

2000 by Rajpal & Sons

Author's age

68 when first published

ISBN

9788170283201 (original)

9780144000999 (Penguin Books, India)

9780143063704 (Penguin Books, India)

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Wikidata