What do you think?
Rate this book
The Hour Before Dawn
Four weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to accounts of India's Secret History. Appearing daily as tantalizing pamphlets on the walls of the city's residential neighbourhoods, Secret History claims to reveal India's suppressed past. Rhetorical and rhythmic, dark and depressing, violent and vengeful - are these accounts true or fictional? Who writes the Secret History?
These questions do not engage Rasheed Halim, who is grappling with the possibility of imminent death and cancer recurrence. He becomes a recluse, waiting to die, popping tranquillizers to get through his days. Not even a night of rioting, in which not a drop of blood is spilt, shakes him out of his melancholy. In desperation, he turns to a helpline, where a mysterious voice kindles in him the desire to live and join a band of people whose mission it is to identify the author of Secret History.
The search takes Rasheed into a world where madness masquerades as rationality, suspicion is the impulse of human action, and politics and history are tools of torment forged in the fire of personal suffering. Is redemption possible in this world? What does it mean to return to lost thoughts? Does Rasheed encounter the author of Secret History?
Thought-provoking and suspenseful, The Hour Before Dawn is the remarkable story of a terminally ill man's search for meaning and his eventual quest to understand how deep the lust for blood runs.
These questions do not engage Rasheed Halim, who is grappling with the possibility of imminent death and cancer recurrence. He becomes a recluse, waiting to die, popping tranquillizers to get through his days. Not even a night of rioting, in which not a drop of blood is spilt, shakes him out of his melancholy. In desperation, he turns to a helpline, where a mysterious voice kindles in him the desire to live and join a band of people whose mission it is to identify the author of Secret History.
The search takes Rasheed into a world where madness masquerades as rationality, suspicion is the impulse of human action, and politics and history are tools of torment forged in the fire of personal suffering. Is redemption possible in this world? What does it mean to return to lost thoughts? Does Rasheed encounter the author of Secret History?
Thought-provoking and suspenseful, The Hour Before Dawn is the remarkable story of a terminally ill man's search for meaning and his eventual quest to understand how deep the lust for blood runs.
519 pages, Kindle Edition
First published December 15, 2014
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
January 23, 2023
Book Review
Book - The Hour Before Dawn
Author - Ajaz Ashraf
Genre - Fiction
Rating - 1.5 / 5
The hour before dawn was my highly anticipated book last year. The setting of this book, in central India with events revolving around the demolition of the Babri masjid took me with great expectations. Four weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to accounts of India’s Secret History, pasted on the walls of the city’s residential neighbourhoods, dividing its people as never before. That division and its ill effects of the pamphlets are mirrored in a school football match which suddenly turns into a game between Muslims and Hindus further resulting in injurious fights.
As the blurb suggested, the book had themes, at least I thought so, on the inter-religion tension between Hindus and Muslims, socio-political imbalances, the role of media at the time of developing unrest in the country and moral responsibilities of citizens at both individual and whole level. But it was less of what surfaced through its blurb and more of an irrelevant detailed narrative of a man, Rasheed Halim, suffering from cancer and fighting emotionally his health challenges. In fact, this book should have been titled 'Rasheed Halim and the prisoner of cancer'. ('No pun intended').
At times it feels that to add weightage to the book, the author has included all such irrelevant details. Details that should have been edited out so that this book didn't lose its essence midway.
According to me only in areas where Secret History (pamphlets with polarizing content to seed hatred between communities) and its subplots arrive the book seems worth completing. How the Secret History gained popularity and how it influenced major parts of Delhi was detailed brilliantly. What kept me going was the dire revelation of the author of Secret History and the motive behind those hate-filled writings. Even that motive when disclosed at the near end of the book was too subtle to make someone so full of hate towards a particular community.
I firmly wished this book to be better as I progressed but in vain.
Book - The Hour Before Dawn
Author - Ajaz Ashraf
Genre - Fiction
Rating - 1.5 / 5
The hour before dawn was my highly anticipated book last year. The setting of this book, in central India with events revolving around the demolition of the Babri masjid took me with great expectations. Four weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to accounts of India’s Secret History, pasted on the walls of the city’s residential neighbourhoods, dividing its people as never before. That division and its ill effects of the pamphlets are mirrored in a school football match which suddenly turns into a game between Muslims and Hindus further resulting in injurious fights.
As the blurb suggested, the book had themes, at least I thought so, on the inter-religion tension between Hindus and Muslims, socio-political imbalances, the role of media at the time of developing unrest in the country and moral responsibilities of citizens at both individual and whole level. But it was less of what surfaced through its blurb and more of an irrelevant detailed narrative of a man, Rasheed Halim, suffering from cancer and fighting emotionally his health challenges. In fact, this book should have been titled 'Rasheed Halim and the prisoner of cancer'. ('No pun intended').
At times it feels that to add weightage to the book, the author has included all such irrelevant details. Details that should have been edited out so that this book didn't lose its essence midway.
According to me only in areas where Secret History (pamphlets with polarizing content to seed hatred between communities) and its subplots arrive the book seems worth completing. How the Secret History gained popularity and how it influenced major parts of Delhi was detailed brilliantly. What kept me going was the dire revelation of the author of Secret History and the motive behind those hate-filled writings. Even that motive when disclosed at the near end of the book was too subtle to make someone so full of hate towards a particular community.
I firmly wished this book to be better as I progressed but in vain.
Want to read
August 19, 2019This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 14, 2025
It’s a first book that I read where the author expects us to mail him to know the ending of the book, totally selfish of him. I feel I wasted my time reading this book.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews