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Five Queen's Road
‘Dina Lal wasn’t moving . . . Hindu or not, he wasn’t, goddamnit, going anywhere.’
Lahore, 1947. Dina Lal, a true-blue Lahori, refuses to leave, staying put in Five Queen’s Road, a house he bought, in spite of his wife’s greatest misgivings, from an Englishman who was deeply reluctant to part with it. To insulate his family from the mayhem on the streets, Dina Lal converts to Islam and as added protection invites Amir Shah, a Muslim colleague, and his children, Javid and Rubina, to share the house with him. But the events that unfold over the next few months make a mockery of Dina Lal’s plans. While Dina Lal and Amir Shah cross swords with each other at every given opportunity—though unexpectedly and in spite of themselves rushing to the other’s defence in moments of crisis—a furtive friendship blossoms between Dina Lal and Javid.
Ten years later Javid’s European wife, Irene, still struggling with her World War II memories, joins the tumultuous household. Inexplicably, the lines of the house are redrawn, and the new border is no less arbitrary and contentious than the one that sundered the subcontinent. While the house is steadily encroached upon by a car shop settlement and a sweepers’ colony, the occupants’ long-standing feud reaches new heights. But the family sees an unexpected alliance develop and loyalties, to person and nation, are scrutinized.
In this stunning novel that weaves family saga and national history, Sorayya Khan writes deftly of characters who battle memories and each other alike.
Lahore, 1947. Dina Lal, a true-blue Lahori, refuses to leave, staying put in Five Queen’s Road, a house he bought, in spite of his wife’s greatest misgivings, from an Englishman who was deeply reluctant to part with it. To insulate his family from the mayhem on the streets, Dina Lal converts to Islam and as added protection invites Amir Shah, a Muslim colleague, and his children, Javid and Rubina, to share the house with him. But the events that unfold over the next few months make a mockery of Dina Lal’s plans. While Dina Lal and Amir Shah cross swords with each other at every given opportunity—though unexpectedly and in spite of themselves rushing to the other’s defence in moments of crisis—a furtive friendship blossoms between Dina Lal and Javid.
Ten years later Javid’s European wife, Irene, still struggling with her World War II memories, joins the tumultuous household. Inexplicably, the lines of the house are redrawn, and the new border is no less arbitrary and contentious than the one that sundered the subcontinent. While the house is steadily encroached upon by a car shop settlement and a sweepers’ colony, the occupants’ long-standing feud reaches new heights. But the family sees an unexpected alliance develop and loyalties, to person and nation, are scrutinized.
In this stunning novel that weaves family saga and national history, Sorayya Khan writes deftly of characters who battle memories and each other alike.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
3 people are currently reading
207 people want to read
About the author
Sorayya Khan
5 books129 followersSorayya Khan was born in Vienna, Austria, grew up in Islamabad, Pakistan, and received her BA and MA in the US. She didn’t know she wanted to be a writer until she began writing fiction and couldn’t stop.
Sorayya is the author of We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir (2022), which she wrote after her mother’s death, and three novels, Noor (2004), Five Queen’s Road (2009), and City of Spies (2015), which won Best International Fiction Award at the Sharjah Book Fair (2016).
Sorayya’s writing has appeared in Guernica, Longreads, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, The Malahat Review, Journal of Narrative Politics, and several other magazines and anthologies. She is the winner of a Malahat Review Novella Prize for "In the Shadows of the Margalla Hills," an early imagining of a central event in City of Spies. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award which took her to Bangladesh and Pakistan in order to research Noor --and changed her understanding of humanity and war. Some years ago, before she realized she would write non-fiction, she received a grant from a local arts foundation that sent her to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where she interviewed tsunami survivors and learned more about love and resilience than she could have imagined. She lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and two children, and is happy to be again at work in a fictional universe.
Sorayya is the author of We Take Our Cities with Us: A Memoir (2022), which she wrote after her mother’s death, and three novels, Noor (2004), Five Queen’s Road (2009), and City of Spies (2015), which won Best International Fiction Award at the Sharjah Book Fair (2016).
Sorayya’s writing has appeared in Guernica, Longreads, The Kenyon Review, North American Review, The Malahat Review, Journal of Narrative Politics, and several other magazines and anthologies. She is the winner of a Malahat Review Novella Prize for "In the Shadows of the Margalla Hills," an early imagining of a central event in City of Spies. She is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar Award which took her to Bangladesh and Pakistan in order to research Noor --and changed her understanding of humanity and war. Some years ago, before she realized she would write non-fiction, she received a grant from a local arts foundation that sent her to Banda Aceh, Indonesia, where she interviewed tsunami survivors and learned more about love and resilience than she could have imagined. She lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband and two children, and is happy to be again at work in a fictional universe.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 4, 2021
This gem wouldn't have reached my bookshelf if not for Barbara. She told me about Sorayya Khan and her books. If you know me, you know that the name ‘Five Queen’s Road’ took a place in my heart right after hearing it. I was eager if not obsessive to have the book. Well, it was nowhere to be found. The soft copy didn’t come to kindle so there was almost no chance that the hard copy would make it to my country as only popular books are imported here. Finally after a passionate search I found the paperback in Amazon.in and pre-ordered it to my local book shop who takes custom orders and brings them from India. After waiting a month, it reached my hand, a book with a cover containing the golden yellow afternoon sky of Lahore. A light paperback which I read with my morning tea and which I closed and left beside my pillow before closing my eyes to sleep.
Five Queen’s Road is a house at Lahore built by an Englishman in the 50’s. Independence was declared in India. The British packed their bags and left the country after dividing it into two- India and Pakistan (which is again divided into two). The house Five Queen’s Road was left to Dina Lal. Soon a wall of partition would divide the house into two sides- back house where Dina Lal lived and front house where his tenant Amir Shah started to live. Two neighbors who got distant day by day, avoided each other, saved each other, blamed each other, peeking through the wall of partition at each other’s lives. Two neighbors, both of them claiming that Five Queen’s Road belongs to him only. Whose house is this actually? No one’s?
Five Queen’s Road ultimately came into my view as the Indian subcontinent with a partition. I have read books about the partition of my side of the border, shared by India and the former East Pakistan. Five Queen’s Road took me on a journey to the other side of India’s border that she shares with Pakistan. I discovered, the incidents were more or less similar there. So what was the difference we were fighting against? We, the Hindu Muslim of the three countries that was once free from the aching mark named ‘border’ before the British parted with it.
When Rubina buried the bag more deeply in the dirt, it resembled how the Hindu-Muslims of this subcontinent carry empathy deep inside their hearts for each other, yet each time they want to dig the empathy up, they end up burying it more.
The book was rich! It showed the colors of Lahore and made it so alive to the readers. Amir Shah and Dina Lal’s complex characters and even more complex relationship perfectly symbolized the two countries India and Pakistan. The exceptional relation Amir Shah shared with his daughter-in-law Irene was a catchy one. Amir Shah wouldn’t look at his war, not from this close. But he would look at it only from a distance which Irene brought with her to Lahore. Irene who embraced the blazing sun of Lahore, who would look back at Europe as a dark continent even though the sky is just a sky. The two people who couldn’t open up the wound they carry inside suddenly become very easy to open it up. A loss of a dear one who only lives in the breast pocket of one, a memory of a dark room that from time to time haunts the other. Soon the two people developed a common language between them.
In this richly jewelled book, runs two threads with the survival from world war 2 and from partition. An exquisite portrait of two historical threads crossing each other.
Five Queen’s Road is a house at Lahore built by an Englishman in the 50’s. Independence was declared in India. The British packed their bags and left the country after dividing it into two- India and Pakistan (which is again divided into two). The house Five Queen’s Road was left to Dina Lal. Soon a wall of partition would divide the house into two sides- back house where Dina Lal lived and front house where his tenant Amir Shah started to live. Two neighbors who got distant day by day, avoided each other, saved each other, blamed each other, peeking through the wall of partition at each other’s lives. Two neighbors, both of them claiming that Five Queen’s Road belongs to him only. Whose house is this actually? No one’s?
Five Queen’s Road ultimately came into my view as the Indian subcontinent with a partition. I have read books about the partition of my side of the border, shared by India and the former East Pakistan. Five Queen’s Road took me on a journey to the other side of India’s border that she shares with Pakistan. I discovered, the incidents were more or less similar there. So what was the difference we were fighting against? We, the Hindu Muslim of the three countries that was once free from the aching mark named ‘border’ before the British parted with it.
When Rubina buried the bag more deeply in the dirt, it resembled how the Hindu-Muslims of this subcontinent carry empathy deep inside their hearts for each other, yet each time they want to dig the empathy up, they end up burying it more.
The book was rich! It showed the colors of Lahore and made it so alive to the readers. Amir Shah and Dina Lal’s complex characters and even more complex relationship perfectly symbolized the two countries India and Pakistan. The exceptional relation Amir Shah shared with his daughter-in-law Irene was a catchy one. Amir Shah wouldn’t look at his war, not from this close. But he would look at it only from a distance which Irene brought with her to Lahore. Irene who embraced the blazing sun of Lahore, who would look back at Europe as a dark continent even though the sky is just a sky. The two people who couldn’t open up the wound they carry inside suddenly become very easy to open it up. A loss of a dear one who only lives in the breast pocket of one, a memory of a dark room that from time to time haunts the other. Soon the two people developed a common language between them.
Javid had never been close to his father, but watching him and Irene cement their bond made him wonder how his wife had reached his father in ways he could not.
In this richly jewelled book, runs two threads with the survival from world war 2 and from partition. An exquisite portrait of two historical threads crossing each other.
October 24, 2009
I cannot review this in good conscience, since I know the author and the 10 drafts over the last 20 years with some intimacy. But I can share what two other authors have said:
Book Reviews
‘Five Queen’s Road captures an important fragment of post-Partition history by resurrecting the stories of a defiant Hindu family that stayed behind in Lahore and intertwining it with that of a Muslim family who became their tenants. Richly layered, eminently readable, the narrative unfolds with a poignancy and veracity that will haunt the reader as it did me.’—Bapsi Sidhwa
‘Sorayya Khan’s work has always been permeated with themes of interconnectedness and she explores this further in her moving, multi-layered novel Five Queen’s Road. In a tight, elegant prose, she creates a microcosm of the world by intertwining, across three decades, the story of a colonial Englishman’s one-time house in Lahore and its diverse, post-Partition inhabitants in new-born Pakistan. Her plot links up, skilfully, the traumatic memories of Partition in Lahore with World War II in Holland, through the lives of Amir Khan, a Muslim lawyer, Irene his Dutch daughter-in-law and Dina Lal, the Lahore-born Hindu, who owns the house and shares it with them. The intricate, complex relationships between the characters reflect that of nations and also explore notions of belonging and nationhood as well as the adaptation, migration and mutation, following the violence and political upheavals of the 1940s. These changes are underpinned by Irene’s first meeting with her future husband, Javed, Amir Khan’s son and Dina Lal’s protégé, in the United States—a land of migrants and new beginnings.’—Muneeza Shamsie
If you are interested in purchasing this book there are three methods: (1) order it from Penguin India on line (or other on line bookstores in India), (2) write to me, or (3) send an email to this bookstore in Ithaca: Buffalo Street Books (buffalostreetbooks@hotmail.com). Buffalo Street Books is local independent bookstore and the only US outlet. Cost: $15.00. (Cheaper if you order it from India.)
Book Reviews
‘Five Queen’s Road captures an important fragment of post-Partition history by resurrecting the stories of a defiant Hindu family that stayed behind in Lahore and intertwining it with that of a Muslim family who became their tenants. Richly layered, eminently readable, the narrative unfolds with a poignancy and veracity that will haunt the reader as it did me.’—Bapsi Sidhwa
‘Sorayya Khan’s work has always been permeated with themes of interconnectedness and she explores this further in her moving, multi-layered novel Five Queen’s Road. In a tight, elegant prose, she creates a microcosm of the world by intertwining, across three decades, the story of a colonial Englishman’s one-time house in Lahore and its diverse, post-Partition inhabitants in new-born Pakistan. Her plot links up, skilfully, the traumatic memories of Partition in Lahore with World War II in Holland, through the lives of Amir Khan, a Muslim lawyer, Irene his Dutch daughter-in-law and Dina Lal, the Lahore-born Hindu, who owns the house and shares it with them. The intricate, complex relationships between the characters reflect that of nations and also explore notions of belonging and nationhood as well as the adaptation, migration and mutation, following the violence and political upheavals of the 1940s. These changes are underpinned by Irene’s first meeting with her future husband, Javed, Amir Khan’s son and Dina Lal’s protégé, in the United States—a land of migrants and new beginnings.’—Muneeza Shamsie
If you are interested in purchasing this book there are three methods: (1) order it from Penguin India on line (or other on line bookstores in India), (2) write to me, or (3) send an email to this bookstore in Ithaca: Buffalo Street Books (buffalostreetbooks@hotmail.com). Buffalo Street Books is local independent bookstore and the only US outlet. Cost: $15.00. (Cheaper if you order it from India.)
April 9, 2019
In 1947 Earl Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India, signed on the dotted line to give independence to the nation of India and like so many of the British living there, he prepared to pack his bags and head home. The transition from the old administration to the new was not simple. The large red ‘blob’ on the world map which represented the India of Empire days was torn apart by two new lines forming the boundaries between Hindu-majority India and her newly-formed Muslim neighbours, East and West Pakistan. In just a couple of sweeps of a pen, the face of India lost her ‘ears’ in the Partition and tens of millions of people found themselves on the wrong side of the line. Chaos and carnage ensued with millions left dead and many millions more made homeless as they left behind everything they’d built over many generations. The Partition is a strong and oft reworked theme of the literature of the sub-continent but in Sorayya Khan’s novel, Five Queen’s Road, the more typical tale of leaving is replaced with one of the determination of a stubborn man to stay behind in a hostile country.
Five Queen’s Road, the eponymous house that forms the nucleus of the book, comes quite subtly to represent the ravaged country of India. Built and owned by John Smithson, an Englishman who’d made his fortune on the Railways, the grand villa stands in the kind of stunning fragrant gardens that only a man with deep pockets and access to a lot of cheap gardeners could aspire to maintain. As he prepares to head back to England, a country that will never satisfy him or fill the gap in his life left by Five Queen’s Road, Smithson turns his thoughts to finding a respectable buyer to take his home at a knock-down price on the condition that the new owner will care for the house and its contents.
Dina Lal is the new owner – a Lahori born and bred and not a man to let the small matter of being a Hindu in a newly-formed Muslim land stop him from getting his dream home. Whilst he never cares for it the way Smithson did, he is in his own way just as obsessed with Five Queen’s Road as his predecessor. Whilst Lal is stubborn, he’s not entirely stupid or oblivious to the dangers facing him and so he devises a plan to protect his family. He divides the house he’s just bought into two parts and invites a respectable Muslim widower, Amir Shah, and his family to move into the ‘front house’, whilst he and his family take the ‘back house’. He also converts his religion (much to his wife’s disbelief) to Islam, changing the name at the entrance to his home to D.L. Ahmed.
Five Queen’s Road is thus – like India and Pakistan – partitioned. Unlike the countries, the partition of the house starts on friendly terms but it’s not long before the border disputes escalate and the cracks in the house mirror the cracks in Lal and Shah’s arrangement. Each of the two men winds themselves up into increasing rages and resentments, yet beneath the superficial hatred, there’s a strange kind of caring and symbiotic relationship going on. When Lal is stabbed outside his house early in the book, Shah’s son Javid takes him to the hospital for treatment even though his action means that he misses the arrival of his European wife who lands at the airport the very same day. When the wall of Shah’s ‘library’ collapses in a high storm, it’s Lal who throws himself at his neighbour, pushing him out of the way of the falling masonry and saving him from death or injury.
Khan’s novel runs from 1947 to 1980 during which time Five Queen’s Road undergoes a steady process of decay, representative some might suggest of the widespread changes across India and Pakistan. You’ll seldom meet an Indian or Pakistani who won’t tell you that things were so much better in the past and the house reflects this sense of entropy in action. The once great gardens are nibbled away as a group of car mechanics set up shop on one of the lawns and a squatter community of ‘sweepers’ expands ever closer towards the house. For most of the characters, the steady decay of Five Queen’s Road and its gardens is a cause of concern and despair but for Irene, the Dutch wife of Amir Shah’s son Javid, it’s a place full of wonder, colour and hope. For her, Lahore represents the culmination of her desire to get as far away as possible from the invaded and desecrated Holland of her childhood. She survived the ‘Die Honger’ Winter in which the German army starved much of the Dutch population with a diet that Victoria Beckam might have considered ‘a bit on the mean side’ in terms of calories, so Lahore seems a wonderful place of warmth and fragrance and the Shah family a fabulous, vibrant substitute for her own lost family.
Most of the book is set between 1947 and 1960 which is an unusual period for a novel about the sub-continent. It (just) post-dates Independence but precedes the arrival of the hippies and over-landers in the 1960s and it’s one of those eras when the gap between the post-war austerity of Europe and the post-Independence exuberance of Pakistan probably meant the lifestyle gaps between the two were at their least predictable.
As is often the case in a family saga, not very much actually seems to ‘happen’ in Five Queen’s Road. It’s only when you take stock of the desertions, abductions, stabbings, illnesses and feuds that you actually realise that Sorraya Khan has squeezed a lot into her slim novel of just 210 pages. She skips back and forth through time, unpeeling the onion layers of the complex relationships between the Dina Lal and his neighbours. Events take place and you wonder “What’s all that about then?” only to find the cause and effects subtly uncovered in a chapter that follows but is set earlier in the history. Surprisingly it’s not too contrived or difficult to follow this non-linear progression.
Khan develops unlikely relationships between her characters showing that each of the two senior protagonists, Lal and Shah, has not lost the ability to love and care as a result of their hatred for each other. Dina Lal and Shah’s son Javid have a relationship more like father and son than Javid has with his own father and Amir Shah’s peaceful enjoyment of his new daughter-in-law’s company goes far beyond his relationship with his own (rather jealous) daughter. Despite their feuding, Khan shows the intrinsic need to love and be loved, to car and be cared for in spite of all a human’s short-comings.
It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that I will happily read just about any book about 20th century India, especially anything about the Partition, but it would be fair to say that not everything that comes out of the sub-continent sparkles like Five Queen’s Road. I picked my copy up at Bangalore airport as a last minute “Quick, get rid of the rupees, we’re about the board” purchase and I loved every page of this gentle novel with is multi-layered structure.
Five Queen’s Road, the eponymous house that forms the nucleus of the book, comes quite subtly to represent the ravaged country of India. Built and owned by John Smithson, an Englishman who’d made his fortune on the Railways, the grand villa stands in the kind of stunning fragrant gardens that only a man with deep pockets and access to a lot of cheap gardeners could aspire to maintain. As he prepares to head back to England, a country that will never satisfy him or fill the gap in his life left by Five Queen’s Road, Smithson turns his thoughts to finding a respectable buyer to take his home at a knock-down price on the condition that the new owner will care for the house and its contents.
Dina Lal is the new owner – a Lahori born and bred and not a man to let the small matter of being a Hindu in a newly-formed Muslim land stop him from getting his dream home. Whilst he never cares for it the way Smithson did, he is in his own way just as obsessed with Five Queen’s Road as his predecessor. Whilst Lal is stubborn, he’s not entirely stupid or oblivious to the dangers facing him and so he devises a plan to protect his family. He divides the house he’s just bought into two parts and invites a respectable Muslim widower, Amir Shah, and his family to move into the ‘front house’, whilst he and his family take the ‘back house’. He also converts his religion (much to his wife’s disbelief) to Islam, changing the name at the entrance to his home to D.L. Ahmed.
Five Queen’s Road is thus – like India and Pakistan – partitioned. Unlike the countries, the partition of the house starts on friendly terms but it’s not long before the border disputes escalate and the cracks in the house mirror the cracks in Lal and Shah’s arrangement. Each of the two men winds themselves up into increasing rages and resentments, yet beneath the superficial hatred, there’s a strange kind of caring and symbiotic relationship going on. When Lal is stabbed outside his house early in the book, Shah’s son Javid takes him to the hospital for treatment even though his action means that he misses the arrival of his European wife who lands at the airport the very same day. When the wall of Shah’s ‘library’ collapses in a high storm, it’s Lal who throws himself at his neighbour, pushing him out of the way of the falling masonry and saving him from death or injury.
Khan’s novel runs from 1947 to 1980 during which time Five Queen’s Road undergoes a steady process of decay, representative some might suggest of the widespread changes across India and Pakistan. You’ll seldom meet an Indian or Pakistani who won’t tell you that things were so much better in the past and the house reflects this sense of entropy in action. The once great gardens are nibbled away as a group of car mechanics set up shop on one of the lawns and a squatter community of ‘sweepers’ expands ever closer towards the house. For most of the characters, the steady decay of Five Queen’s Road and its gardens is a cause of concern and despair but for Irene, the Dutch wife of Amir Shah’s son Javid, it’s a place full of wonder, colour and hope. For her, Lahore represents the culmination of her desire to get as far away as possible from the invaded and desecrated Holland of her childhood. She survived the ‘Die Honger’ Winter in which the German army starved much of the Dutch population with a diet that Victoria Beckam might have considered ‘a bit on the mean side’ in terms of calories, so Lahore seems a wonderful place of warmth and fragrance and the Shah family a fabulous, vibrant substitute for her own lost family.
Most of the book is set between 1947 and 1960 which is an unusual period for a novel about the sub-continent. It (just) post-dates Independence but precedes the arrival of the hippies and over-landers in the 1960s and it’s one of those eras when the gap between the post-war austerity of Europe and the post-Independence exuberance of Pakistan probably meant the lifestyle gaps between the two were at their least predictable.
As is often the case in a family saga, not very much actually seems to ‘happen’ in Five Queen’s Road. It’s only when you take stock of the desertions, abductions, stabbings, illnesses and feuds that you actually realise that Sorraya Khan has squeezed a lot into her slim novel of just 210 pages. She skips back and forth through time, unpeeling the onion layers of the complex relationships between the Dina Lal and his neighbours. Events take place and you wonder “What’s all that about then?” only to find the cause and effects subtly uncovered in a chapter that follows but is set earlier in the history. Surprisingly it’s not too contrived or difficult to follow this non-linear progression.
Khan develops unlikely relationships between her characters showing that each of the two senior protagonists, Lal and Shah, has not lost the ability to love and care as a result of their hatred for each other. Dina Lal and Shah’s son Javid have a relationship more like father and son than Javid has with his own father and Amir Shah’s peaceful enjoyment of his new daughter-in-law’s company goes far beyond his relationship with his own (rather jealous) daughter. Despite their feuding, Khan shows the intrinsic need to love and be loved, to car and be cared for in spite of all a human’s short-comings.
It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that I will happily read just about any book about 20th century India, especially anything about the Partition, but it would be fair to say that not everything that comes out of the sub-continent sparkles like Five Queen’s Road. I picked my copy up at Bangalore airport as a last minute “Quick, get rid of the rupees, we’re about the board” purchase and I loved every page of this gentle novel with is multi-layered structure.
October 8, 2010
It's ridiculously hard to get a copy of this book because it was published by Penguin India and has not been issued in the U.S. Could someone please fix this mistake? FIVE QUEEN'S ROAD is a beautiful, fascinating novel about partition and its divisive effects on a colonial house and its inhabitants. If you want to understand Pakistan better and to see it through Muslim, Hindu, and European eyes, look no farther than the novels of Sorayya Khan.
February 12, 2011
wonderful story. There are passages that my brain could smell and feel.
February 3, 2011
Loved this book. Makes me want to go to Lahore!
September 19, 2018
Read it along with City of Spies by same author. Very enjoyable and an easy, quick read.
November 7, 2013
A good journey through the life at Pakistan.
I can understand the nativity via DH Ahmed. The end could have been more dramatic had this been a drama. However, since the story is based on reality, it ends without any bang.
The author takes you with the mindset of almost every character in the book.
Infact, I was able to imagine how Rubina would act under that situation.
Bringing the WW II into this was not required. However, the way it is described would make you forgive that.
Amir Shah... I expected a lot from him. But he became a normal person that we see in course of life.
Overall, a nice read. You can compare how Pakistan was devastated after its partition from India (and so was India). And how a Hindu family HAD to change for survival. And how they started becoming invisible, ending with Dina Lal Ahmed, whose change in religion did no help.
I can understand the nativity via DH Ahmed. The end could have been more dramatic had this been a drama. However, since the story is based on reality, it ends without any bang.
The author takes you with the mindset of almost every character in the book.
Infact, I was able to imagine how Rubina would act under that situation.
Bringing the WW II into this was not required. However, the way it is described would make you forgive that.
Amir Shah... I expected a lot from him. But he became a normal person that we see in course of life.
Overall, a nice read. You can compare how Pakistan was devastated after its partition from India (and so was India). And how a Hindu family HAD to change for survival. And how they started becoming invisible, ending with Dina Lal Ahmed, whose change in religion did no help.
November 15, 2013
What a read ! The story is simple and yet it gnaws on your insides because it has moments of love loss and loneliness; khan has beautifully penned the intricacies of human relations, the fact that we are first and foremost humans before being part of a religion, race or creed ! The pace and poise of this tale is just perfect
December 1, 2015
Beautifully written novel by Sorayya Khan. This is the story of a clash of cultures; rich and fascinating. Her descriptions put you right into the story, in post-partition Lahore, but the story is utterly timeless. It's a must read; particularly given the current refugee crisis.
November 5, 2016
very well written...showed another perspective of the Partition and its aftermaths and the way people thought..
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews