Partition Dialogues

by Alok Bhalla

241Back the BookIn an invaluable addition to the genre of Partition literature, Alok Bhalla explores the concept of boundaries and homes through his interviews with six well-known novelists from India and Pakistan. In conversation with Intizar Husain, Krishna Sobti, Bhisham Sahni, Krishna Baldev Vaid, Kamleshwar, and Bapsi Sidhwa, Bhalla invokes their personal experiences and memories of the years around 1947; their families in pre-Partition India; their Hindu, Muslim, or Sikh neighbors; their ideological shifts; their difficult days of survival amidst the carnage, and the impact of Partition on their writings. This book will interest general readers, students, and researchers in politics and society, South Asian literature, and social history. Alok Bhalla is Professor of English Literature at the Central Institute of English and Foreign Languages, Hyderabad, and has published extensively on literature and politics.'Bhalla's scholarship and erudition come through in a fine introduction. This is a splendid book, a must-read for anyone interested in Partition.' ... ..Historically and literally a work of importance and interest. Many writers still have many insightful things to say and it is important to read an assessment of their work and lives in their own words.' PrefaceThis book should have been finished much earlier. I had imagined it soon after I had published Stories about the Partition if India in three volumes (1994) and had edited a book of critical essays on Sadaat Hasan Manto (1997). Even as I thought about the nature of this book, which refused like a trickster to be trapped into a particular shape, I wrote a series of critical essays in which I tried to evaluate the variety of ideological, social, and religious presuppositions which informed Partition fiction. My analysis of Partition fiction assumes that fictional n

Paperback

Published January 1, 2008