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History's Angel
The story of a middle-aged man in contemporary India discovering that neither his life nor his country are as stable as he thought.
Alif is a middle-aged, mild-mannered history teacher, living in contemporary Delhi, at a time when Muslims in India are seen either as hapless victims or live threats. Though his life's passion is the history he teaches, it's the present that presses down on his wife is set on a bigger house and a better car while trying to ace her MBA exams; his teenage son wants to quit school to get rich; his supercilious colleagues are suspicious of a Muslim teaching India's history; and his old friend Ganesh has just reconnected with a childhood sweetheart with whom Alif was always rather enamored himself.
And then the unthinkable happens. While Alif is leading a school field trip, a student goads him and, in a fit of anger, Alif twists his ear. His job suddenly on the line, Alif finds his life rapidly descending into chaos.
Meanwhile, his home city, too, darkens under the spreading shadow of violence. In this darkly funny, sharply observed and deeply moving novel, Anjum Hasan deftly and delicately explores the force and the consequences of remembering your people’s history in an increasingly indifferent milieu.
Alif is a middle-aged, mild-mannered history teacher, living in contemporary Delhi, at a time when Muslims in India are seen either as hapless victims or live threats. Though his life's passion is the history he teaches, it's the present that presses down on his wife is set on a bigger house and a better car while trying to ace her MBA exams; his teenage son wants to quit school to get rich; his supercilious colleagues are suspicious of a Muslim teaching India's history; and his old friend Ganesh has just reconnected with a childhood sweetheart with whom Alif was always rather enamored himself.
And then the unthinkable happens. While Alif is leading a school field trip, a student goads him and, in a fit of anger, Alif twists his ear. His job suddenly on the line, Alif finds his life rapidly descending into chaos.
Meanwhile, his home city, too, darkens under the spreading shadow of violence. In this darkly funny, sharply observed and deeply moving novel, Anjum Hasan deftly and delicately explores the force and the consequences of remembering your people’s history in an increasingly indifferent milieu.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2023
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2381 people want to read
About the author
Anjum Hasan
17 books103 followersAnjum Hasan is an Indian poet and novelist. She was born in Shillong, Meghalaya and currently lives in Bangalore, India. She has also contributed poems, articles and short stories to various national and international publications.
Anjum is Books Editor, The Caravan.
Anjum is Books Editor, The Caravan.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
January 3, 2024
Finding people who are at peace with circumstance is tough enough in real life, but tougher, surely, in novels. In Anjum Hasan’s History’s Angel, the protagonist, Alif, is more or less at peace. Peace here means a state of pleasant intellectual jostling, in which Alif, a history teacher at a school in Delhi, subjects every other living moment against a possibility or actuality in History. Alif loves his job, too, and the idea that he may be over-qualified for it doesn’t bother him. He’s angelic, in the sense that he can float away from his social-real station and the fresh hostilities brewing all around it. In a recent article on Patricia Highsmith’s work, the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek claims that Thomas Ripley, that famous Highsmith creation, is ‘angelic, living in a universe which precedes the Law and its transgression (sin).’ Now, Thomas and Alif are as different as different can be, but if you replace ‘the Law’ with ‘the Present’ in Zizek’s formulation, we arrive at a definition of angelic that applies to Alif.
The other characters in the novel are characters as we usually find them—they need; they want; and they are liable to be thinking of the future and how the present’s hegemonies may shape it. Alif’s wife, Tahira, is working on an MBA to get a better job and, hopefully, be able to buy a flat—ideally in a secular (in the Indian sense) part of the city with no shadows of ghetto life. Their teenage son, Salim, has a general disregard for studies and romances the idea of becoming a tech entrepreneur. Alif’s parents, Mahtab and Shagufta, are in a bit of a bind with a strident beneficiary, Ahmad, who has turned a bit too religious and, perhaps, dangerous. Alif’s friend, Ganesh, with whom he gets drunk now and then, is in a long-term marital crisis, a situation enlivened by contact with his old flame, Prerna.
The novel slowly adds dashes of trouble to Alif’s life. At first, it is the chafing of a new pair of shoes bought from cousin Farouq’s shop. Then it is trouble at the school, where a new regime has taken over and where a devious student puts Alif in the line of prejudiced enquiry. Then there is a sputter of mid-life crisis, with Alif’s attraction towards Prerna and the attendant tangles with a desired other’s unknowability (I loved the fact that Prerna had some connection with Muzaffarnagar, which is where I’m from).
To this mix, the national context provides background. The news is full of rancour for Muslims. Discrimination is rife. There are protests in Shaheen Bagh in the latter half of the novel. The air carries a threat of violence.
There is, in effect, no shortage of incidents in the novel. Never once does the nothing-happens label apply. We turn the pages here for the same reason we do so in most novels: to know what happens next. But there is an aversion to the oppression of Event. By event with a capital E, I mean that nub of signification or significance that most novels today, or at least novels that aim to be called political feel obliged to pride—where, say, a matter of life or death finds direction, or where crumbling circumstance and awful agency play out the direst consequences for the protagonist, or where antagonisms between characters find the fullest voice, or, more generally, where a bunch of pages are designed to land as the loudest thuds. Note the superlatives here, for irrespective of the plot in question, an Event-based model of the novel aims to evoke in the reader a superlative reaction at certain junctures: a feeling of breathlessness, of being swept away by the intensity of the happenings, and inevitably emerging from them with the aid of the vocabulary that cover-speak readily provides: ‘cutting’, ‘scathing’, ‘searing’, ‘mindnumbing’ et al. The model is linked with the processes that produce and market stories, and can work like an injunction on writers—hence the word oppression. Hasan has, in all her work, averted this injunction. History’s Angel wasn’t going to be an exception.
But this aversion can require engineering too. In an essay on the work of Raymond Chandler, the philosopher Fredric Jameson arrives at ‘the interview’ as the rudimentary form of a Chandler episode, “whose ur-form… involves no more than two actors at any given time.” The interview form suited Chandler no less because of his penchant for description. Every time Philip Marlowe meets a new client or a person of interest, we get generous descriptions of interiors and the person’s appearance and tics (and choice of drink). I claim that the mode of one-on-one conversations suits most writers who know like describing spaces and people. This mode is visible in a majority of episodes, or incidents, in History’s Angel. The novel progresses through serial one-on-one conversations, all designed to either give Alif’s history-dives ample bandwidth or to allow us a personal history of the other character. There is an artificial cleanliness to this schema, a constant whiff of set-up. Sometimes, a complication is explicitly avoided. A planned meeting between Ganesh, Prerna, and Alif becomes a meeting of two: Ganesh is unbelievably held up in traffic. The conversation at a dinner hosted by Alif’s family for Ganesh’s family begins to arrive at politics but is hastily cut to an episode between Alif and Salim. At his parents' house, Alif either converses with Mahtab or with Shagufta—rarely are all three in conversation together. When Alif has to talk to Ahmad, the two go out for a walk. Who is avoiding the mess, we wonder, the characters or the novelist?
Thankfully, this is not always the case, and the narrative does, at times, stay in a place where there are multiple characters intent on speaking or doing. Things get delightfully messy when that happens. There is a knife attack inside a living room. There is a fine illustration, inside a school staffroom, of how News interrupts History. There is a conversation full of yucky Islamophobia, ending in Tahira’s tears. There is a hilarious enquiry-committee scene that I found to be equal (and tonally inverse) to the grim, characteristically tight one in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. These episodes elevate the novel, and Hasan’s achievement is to make them do so without any of them acquiring the centrality of Event.
I go back to what I called ‘the constant whiff of set-up’ a couple of paragraphs before and acknowledge the contradiction. The multi-character episodes are also set up. And perhaps what I see as visible artificiality is just necessary artifice, and not as visible in general as it is to me. Fiction writers read fiction more harshly. As one myself, I suffer from the habit of, metaphorically speaking, seeing a building and trying to note the beams and pillars, of trying to see the rebars and concrete, even.
Hasan’s love of the language, and her ear for its music, shows all through. There is a felicity with the full range English has to offer, the knowing confidence of an experienced novelist easily subverting the common adages applicable to lesser writers. Adverbs, for example. The American school will advise writers to minimise them. The advice doesn’t apply to Hasan. We have five adverbs and modifiers on the very first page: 'jerkily', 'impatiently compressed English', 'pointedly', 'unnecessarily decorous reply', and 'vilely large Fortuner'.
Alliteration, assonance and a general deftness with adjectives, all nearing Nabokovian levels, and occasionally seeming inspired by Nabokov’s prose, abound. We have ‘damp eroticism’, ‘paradisiacal pampering’, ‘tremulous awe’, ‘labyrinthine laptop’, ‘shelled pomegranate’, ‘bulbous sofa’, ‘two-toned, pointed Oxfords decorated with shapely arcs of perforated detail’, ‘bald fact’, ‘intricately coiffured housewives’, and others in the first twenty or so pages. These are constructions one wouldn’t be surprised to find in Lolita. A short paragraph is given to arrive at the word ‘beetle-browed’ for Salim’s eyebrows. Humbert Humbert was beetle-browed.
There is a generous sprinkling of delectable sentences. Sample these two, the first one of which is, I think, the kind of sentence—its music earned with no compromise on specificity—not many Indian writers in English can write:
The whole thing reminded me of Irwin Allan Sealy describing the making of jalebis in The Trotter-nama:
Reading sentences so dexterous is its own joy; it makes us forget concerns of Story and Plot. In Hasan’s novel, the English is like Sealy’s jalebis: plumped up, but still crisp. Occasional oversight is inevitable, though I do not remember encountering it in History’s Angel, except perhaps on the two pages where the words ‘calcified’ and ‘beguilements’ entered speech.
I have focused much on words and sentences because unlike the newspaper review, which usually limits itself to under a thousand words, there is no limit on space here. Reviews of History’s Angel have focused on elements of the story, or its cast of characters, or it being a Delhi novel. The Hindustan Times review by Saudamini Jain called it a busy novel (it is full of incidents) but also saw History as ‘the heavyweight’, the element that ‘hangs over everything’ and ‘comes in the way of narrative.’ Jain considers that ‘this may well have been the intention’ but ultimately regards Alif’s history-reveries as ‘a crutch.’ I regard this last assessment as harsh. I enjoyed the reveries. Hasan uses them for several purposes: as Alif’s way of zoning out from a conversation, as his way of contributing to a conversation with something that isn’t exactly comforting to others and marks him as unique, as a signifier of what he chooses to be silent about, as a tool of world-building (the Delhiness of the novel is constituted of these reveries), or as a running thread of disabusement (don’t know if this is a word) that wraps around itself that which may be regarded as the novel’s nuanced message. If there was anything that left me dissatisfied on occasion, it was the narrative and its incident-creation. I did not, eg., fully buy into Mahtab’s trauma from a shootout long ago (he was a cop in U.P.) and failed to see what purpose that bit served. I thought the novel needed one more incident around Salim, Alif’s son, for the simple reason that the one thing that can jolt a man out of a rich inner life is the constant worrying about his progeny’s future.
But these are complaints one can come up with for any novel. My overall experience with the novel was, indubitably, one of reading a truly accomplished work. I noted, or perhaps I constructed, the thread of continuity with Hasan’s earlier novel, The Cosmopolitans. Qayenaat, its fifty-something protagonist, ‘the motherless girl who lived in a government bungalow and wanted so much to be an artist,’ has to rebuild herself after recent mishaps while avoiding crushing nostalgia for her days of potential. As a novel written during the UPA years, The Cosmopolitans is premised on a kind of easy cosmopolitanism that was available to the educated middle classes (a small percentage of the population) in the first six or so decades after independence. This cosmopolitanism engendered in some an artistic impulse, and in the novel it is, at first, the failures of fulfilling this impulse (and the coveting, with a hint of jealousy, of those for whom it was fulfilled) that drives the drama. But the ultimate negation of this cosmopolitanism happens in the so-called hinterland, where it becomes clear how an overwhelming majority of the country is denied it. In a deft inversion, Qayenaat (the Quixote) returns to the friendship of Saathi (the Sancho, also her one-time ex) at the end of her adventures, somewhat at peace with the artistic gifts denied her and somewhat aware of how what is already hers may be enough. History’s Angel’s Alif is, like Qayenaat, the child of a government servant; and also, in the more meaningful ways of interpreting the word, a thorough cosmopolitan. But History’s Angel is a novel written during the Modi years. For the middle-class Muslim protagonist, the impulse towards Art is—has to be, arguably—replaced by an impulse towards History. Ambition of all kinds is chucked out of the protagonist’s inner world. The playground is limited to a historical city (the hinterland gives even more grisly stories of violence). For Alif, there is no return from adventure possible, because adventure itself is impossible; the only sojourns are the ones inside the mind. The option of emigration, therefore, must be firmly on the table. No country for those aware of History, ours.
The other characters in the novel are characters as we usually find them—they need; they want; and they are liable to be thinking of the future and how the present’s hegemonies may shape it. Alif’s wife, Tahira, is working on an MBA to get a better job and, hopefully, be able to buy a flat—ideally in a secular (in the Indian sense) part of the city with no shadows of ghetto life. Their teenage son, Salim, has a general disregard for studies and romances the idea of becoming a tech entrepreneur. Alif’s parents, Mahtab and Shagufta, are in a bit of a bind with a strident beneficiary, Ahmad, who has turned a bit too religious and, perhaps, dangerous. Alif’s friend, Ganesh, with whom he gets drunk now and then, is in a long-term marital crisis, a situation enlivened by contact with his old flame, Prerna.
The novel slowly adds dashes of trouble to Alif’s life. At first, it is the chafing of a new pair of shoes bought from cousin Farouq’s shop. Then it is trouble at the school, where a new regime has taken over and where a devious student puts Alif in the line of prejudiced enquiry. Then there is a sputter of mid-life crisis, with Alif’s attraction towards Prerna and the attendant tangles with a desired other’s unknowability (I loved the fact that Prerna had some connection with Muzaffarnagar, which is where I’m from).
To this mix, the national context provides background. The news is full of rancour for Muslims. Discrimination is rife. There are protests in Shaheen Bagh in the latter half of the novel. The air carries a threat of violence.
There is, in effect, no shortage of incidents in the novel. Never once does the nothing-happens label apply. We turn the pages here for the same reason we do so in most novels: to know what happens next. But there is an aversion to the oppression of Event. By event with a capital E, I mean that nub of signification or significance that most novels today, or at least novels that aim to be called political feel obliged to pride—where, say, a matter of life or death finds direction, or where crumbling circumstance and awful agency play out the direst consequences for the protagonist, or where antagonisms between characters find the fullest voice, or, more generally, where a bunch of pages are designed to land as the loudest thuds. Note the superlatives here, for irrespective of the plot in question, an Event-based model of the novel aims to evoke in the reader a superlative reaction at certain junctures: a feeling of breathlessness, of being swept away by the intensity of the happenings, and inevitably emerging from them with the aid of the vocabulary that cover-speak readily provides: ‘cutting’, ‘scathing’, ‘searing’, ‘mindnumbing’ et al. The model is linked with the processes that produce and market stories, and can work like an injunction on writers—hence the word oppression. Hasan has, in all her work, averted this injunction. History’s Angel wasn’t going to be an exception.
But this aversion can require engineering too. In an essay on the work of Raymond Chandler, the philosopher Fredric Jameson arrives at ‘the interview’ as the rudimentary form of a Chandler episode, “whose ur-form… involves no more than two actors at any given time.” The interview form suited Chandler no less because of his penchant for description. Every time Philip Marlowe meets a new client or a person of interest, we get generous descriptions of interiors and the person’s appearance and tics (and choice of drink). I claim that the mode of one-on-one conversations suits most writers who know like describing spaces and people. This mode is visible in a majority of episodes, or incidents, in History’s Angel. The novel progresses through serial one-on-one conversations, all designed to either give Alif’s history-dives ample bandwidth or to allow us a personal history of the other character. There is an artificial cleanliness to this schema, a constant whiff of set-up. Sometimes, a complication is explicitly avoided. A planned meeting between Ganesh, Prerna, and Alif becomes a meeting of two: Ganesh is unbelievably held up in traffic. The conversation at a dinner hosted by Alif’s family for Ganesh’s family begins to arrive at politics but is hastily cut to an episode between Alif and Salim. At his parents' house, Alif either converses with Mahtab or with Shagufta—rarely are all three in conversation together. When Alif has to talk to Ahmad, the two go out for a walk. Who is avoiding the mess, we wonder, the characters or the novelist?
Thankfully, this is not always the case, and the narrative does, at times, stay in a place where there are multiple characters intent on speaking or doing. Things get delightfully messy when that happens. There is a knife attack inside a living room. There is a fine illustration, inside a school staffroom, of how News interrupts History. There is a conversation full of yucky Islamophobia, ending in Tahira’s tears. There is a hilarious enquiry-committee scene that I found to be equal (and tonally inverse) to the grim, characteristically tight one in J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. These episodes elevate the novel, and Hasan’s achievement is to make them do so without any of them acquiring the centrality of Event.
I go back to what I called ‘the constant whiff of set-up’ a couple of paragraphs before and acknowledge the contradiction. The multi-character episodes are also set up. And perhaps what I see as visible artificiality is just necessary artifice, and not as visible in general as it is to me. Fiction writers read fiction more harshly. As one myself, I suffer from the habit of, metaphorically speaking, seeing a building and trying to note the beams and pillars, of trying to see the rebars and concrete, even.
Hasan’s love of the language, and her ear for its music, shows all through. There is a felicity with the full range English has to offer, the knowing confidence of an experienced novelist easily subverting the common adages applicable to lesser writers. Adverbs, for example. The American school will advise writers to minimise them. The advice doesn’t apply to Hasan. We have five adverbs and modifiers on the very first page: 'jerkily', 'impatiently compressed English', 'pointedly', 'unnecessarily decorous reply', and 'vilely large Fortuner'.
Alliteration, assonance and a general deftness with adjectives, all nearing Nabokovian levels, and occasionally seeming inspired by Nabokov’s prose, abound. We have ‘damp eroticism’, ‘paradisiacal pampering’, ‘tremulous awe’, ‘labyrinthine laptop’, ‘shelled pomegranate’, ‘bulbous sofa’, ‘two-toned, pointed Oxfords decorated with shapely arcs of perforated detail’, ‘bald fact’, ‘intricately coiffured housewives’, and others in the first twenty or so pages. These are constructions one wouldn’t be surprised to find in Lolita. A short paragraph is given to arrive at the word ‘beetle-browed’ for Salim’s eyebrows. Humbert Humbert was beetle-browed.
There is a generous sprinkling of delectable sentences. Sample these two, the first one of which is, I think, the kind of sentence—its music earned with no compromise on specificity—not many Indian writers in English can write:
In the night streets of Mehrauli, hands will now be shaping an elastic yeasty dough and slapping one flatbread after the other onto the insides of tandoors improvised from oil drums and aglow with live coals, and then fishing out each puffed-up piece with a hooked rod and flinging it into baskets piled high. Other hands will be laying on embers the skewered, marinated meat, and fanning the flames so that spark light the faces of the men who crowd around tearing the hot flesh and eating soundlessly, quickly, unemotionally.
The whole thing reminded me of Irwin Allan Sealy describing the making of jalebis in The Trotter-nama:
He held his muslin pouch above the hot kadhai and spun a twisting thread of white batter into the oil. A chain of loops and curls and rings formed there, floating on the oil and sizzling gently as it went from white to gold […] The halvai took up a slotted ladle and scooped the golden chain out of the oil. He placed it on a mesh and let the oil drain into a second kadhai. Then he seized the ring and plunged them into a bowl of syrup. When the jalebis had plumped up, but before they had lost their crispness, the halvai broke, the halwai broke off the three rings and pressed on them a tissue of beaten silver […]
Reading sentences so dexterous is its own joy; it makes us forget concerns of Story and Plot. In Hasan’s novel, the English is like Sealy’s jalebis: plumped up, but still crisp. Occasional oversight is inevitable, though I do not remember encountering it in History’s Angel, except perhaps on the two pages where the words ‘calcified’ and ‘beguilements’ entered speech.
I have focused much on words and sentences because unlike the newspaper review, which usually limits itself to under a thousand words, there is no limit on space here. Reviews of History’s Angel have focused on elements of the story, or its cast of characters, or it being a Delhi novel. The Hindustan Times review by Saudamini Jain called it a busy novel (it is full of incidents) but also saw History as ‘the heavyweight’, the element that ‘hangs over everything’ and ‘comes in the way of narrative.’ Jain considers that ‘this may well have been the intention’ but ultimately regards Alif’s history-reveries as ‘a crutch.’ I regard this last assessment as harsh. I enjoyed the reveries. Hasan uses them for several purposes: as Alif’s way of zoning out from a conversation, as his way of contributing to a conversation with something that isn’t exactly comforting to others and marks him as unique, as a signifier of what he chooses to be silent about, as a tool of world-building (the Delhiness of the novel is constituted of these reveries), or as a running thread of disabusement (don’t know if this is a word) that wraps around itself that which may be regarded as the novel’s nuanced message. If there was anything that left me dissatisfied on occasion, it was the narrative and its incident-creation. I did not, eg., fully buy into Mahtab’s trauma from a shootout long ago (he was a cop in U.P.) and failed to see what purpose that bit served. I thought the novel needed one more incident around Salim, Alif’s son, for the simple reason that the one thing that can jolt a man out of a rich inner life is the constant worrying about his progeny’s future.
But these are complaints one can come up with for any novel. My overall experience with the novel was, indubitably, one of reading a truly accomplished work. I noted, or perhaps I constructed, the thread of continuity with Hasan’s earlier novel, The Cosmopolitans. Qayenaat, its fifty-something protagonist, ‘the motherless girl who lived in a government bungalow and wanted so much to be an artist,’ has to rebuild herself after recent mishaps while avoiding crushing nostalgia for her days of potential. As a novel written during the UPA years, The Cosmopolitans is premised on a kind of easy cosmopolitanism that was available to the educated middle classes (a small percentage of the population) in the first six or so decades after independence. This cosmopolitanism engendered in some an artistic impulse, and in the novel it is, at first, the failures of fulfilling this impulse (and the coveting, with a hint of jealousy, of those for whom it was fulfilled) that drives the drama. But the ultimate negation of this cosmopolitanism happens in the so-called hinterland, where it becomes clear how an overwhelming majority of the country is denied it. In a deft inversion, Qayenaat (the Quixote) returns to the friendship of Saathi (the Sancho, also her one-time ex) at the end of her adventures, somewhat at peace with the artistic gifts denied her and somewhat aware of how what is already hers may be enough. History’s Angel’s Alif is, like Qayenaat, the child of a government servant; and also, in the more meaningful ways of interpreting the word, a thorough cosmopolitan. But History’s Angel is a novel written during the Modi years. For the middle-class Muslim protagonist, the impulse towards Art is—has to be, arguably—replaced by an impulse towards History. Ambition of all kinds is chucked out of the protagonist’s inner world. The playground is limited to a historical city (the hinterland gives even more grisly stories of violence). For Alif, there is no return from adventure possible, because adventure itself is impossible; the only sojourns are the ones inside the mind. The option of emigration, therefore, must be firmly on the table. No country for those aware of History, ours.
May 18, 2024
I enjoyed this novel set in Delhi about Alif, a history teacher dealing with changes in his family and country. His trouble at work reflects a wider tension between Hindus & Muslims. He is bookish & philosophical but those around him are becoming more binary & commercial. A little slow & esoteric (for someone with no knowledge of India’s history) but I was invested in Alif & enjoyed the rich details, sense of place & gentle comedy.
October 20, 2023
this book is very easy to love! Anjum Hasan has managed to craft the most everyday and mundane story in which, by literary measure, not much happens. but it’s this unremarkable life led by an unremarkable man that draws you in because it’s so familiar and honest. the mundanity of this also serves an excellent function — as one of my friends pointed out — of conveying how routine islamophobia has become in Delhi. the gravest acts of hatred are responded to with a concern for logistics. not anger or exasperation but with a desire to keep going.
August 9, 2023
Accomplished writer and well-accoladed Anjum Hasan's newly published book is History's Angel. It is the story of Alif, an inconspicuous, non-controversial and non-confrontational school teacher.
As expected, the novel is beautifully written, juxtaposing everyday occurrences against eons of history. It is worth reading for such writing alone.
But if one delves deeper it shows how the world has moved to one where racism is no longer showing its evil face subtly but blatantly and grossly. Generational bigotry is being passed on from parents to impressionable children. Leaders and decision makers often placate the downtrodden with platitudes instead of tackling the real issues; and what's worse is that they often give into what's blatantly incorrect simply because of mass-mentality or a fear to stand up against the more powerful.
But, and there often is a but, as much as I really wanted to, I couldn't, love this book. It came highly recommended by some authors I respect, but I suppose everyone's taste is different. The storytelling was the issue for me, I found it all over the place and didn't hold my interest.
As expected, the novel is beautifully written, juxtaposing everyday occurrences against eons of history. It is worth reading for such writing alone.
But if one delves deeper it shows how the world has moved to one where racism is no longer showing its evil face subtly but blatantly and grossly. Generational bigotry is being passed on from parents to impressionable children. Leaders and decision makers often placate the downtrodden with platitudes instead of tackling the real issues; and what's worse is that they often give into what's blatantly incorrect simply because of mass-mentality or a fear to stand up against the more powerful.
But, and there often is a but, as much as I really wanted to, I couldn't, love this book. It came highly recommended by some authors I respect, but I suppose everyone's taste is different. The storytelling was the issue for me, I found it all over the place and didn't hold my interest.
June 22, 2023
The story of Alif, a primary school history teacher, and his family and friends. A microcosm of the struggle of middle-class Muslim Indians living in Delhi and trying to survive the day to day travails of life in contemporary India, exacerbated by the religious tension (and sometimes overt racism) with the Hindus. None of the protagonists are particularly special, and nothing that happens to them is particularly tragic. The tragedy, and it is a tragedy, is in the accumulation of minor grievances and occurrences that saddens and shocks.
Our protagonist, Alif, is a deeply complex character, and, perhaps, among the more complex I've seen in a while. In some ways, he has been taught by life to subdue himself and hide behind historical allusions, which make up his daily life. He's a loving father, a devoted husband, a committed son, and a good friend. All this notwithstanding, he is also troubled, demotivated, and afraid, incapable of displaying his emotions, fears, concerns, and, most of all, angers ("how to put across ... that the trouble is many-sided, that it involves relationships, work, faith, money, civilisational decay"). I am not sure how conscious this choice by the author was, but there is something allegorical in his personality - creating a microcosm of the fate, behaviour, and mindset of the Muslims in India more broadly.
The writing is fantastic. The story is interspersed with historical references, doing an incredible job in conveying the complexity of India's past. It takes a while to get used to them, but very quickly I learned to appreciate them, not just due to the novelty and interest, but, even more so, due to the role they play in proving, time and again, how the history of India is the history of its peoples, Hindu and Muslim alike. As the protagonist says at one point, there is no such thing as the history of Muslims in India, there is only the history of India.
I was incredibly impressed by the writing. It is perhaps among the more rich and layered usages of language in literature I experienced in many years. The choice of words, the sentence structure, and the overall language construct are incredible.
I also liked the nuanced representation of the Muslim-Hindu issue. The author does not shy away from describing the animosity that exists on both sides, and does not ignore the over-religiousity of some Muslims, which creates room for violence and retribution. A bold and courageous balancing act.
Recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary India, in Indian history, and the nuances of Muslim-Hindu relations in India. It's not an easy read, but it grabs hold of you, doesn't let go, and stays with you when you are done.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.
Our protagonist, Alif, is a deeply complex character, and, perhaps, among the more complex I've seen in a while. In some ways, he has been taught by life to subdue himself and hide behind historical allusions, which make up his daily life. He's a loving father, a devoted husband, a committed son, and a good friend. All this notwithstanding, he is also troubled, demotivated, and afraid, incapable of displaying his emotions, fears, concerns, and, most of all, angers ("how to put across ... that the trouble is many-sided, that it involves relationships, work, faith, money, civilisational decay"). I am not sure how conscious this choice by the author was, but there is something allegorical in his personality - creating a microcosm of the fate, behaviour, and mindset of the Muslims in India more broadly.
The writing is fantastic. The story is interspersed with historical references, doing an incredible job in conveying the complexity of India's past. It takes a while to get used to them, but very quickly I learned to appreciate them, not just due to the novelty and interest, but, even more so, due to the role they play in proving, time and again, how the history of India is the history of its peoples, Hindu and Muslim alike. As the protagonist says at one point, there is no such thing as the history of Muslims in India, there is only the history of India.
I was incredibly impressed by the writing. It is perhaps among the more rich and layered usages of language in literature I experienced in many years. The choice of words, the sentence structure, and the overall language construct are incredible.
I also liked the nuanced representation of the Muslim-Hindu issue. The author does not shy away from describing the animosity that exists on both sides, and does not ignore the over-religiousity of some Muslims, which creates room for violence and retribution. A bold and courageous balancing act.
Recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary India, in Indian history, and the nuances of Muslim-Hindu relations in India. It's not an easy read, but it grabs hold of you, doesn't let go, and stays with you when you are done.
My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.
February 7, 2024
Anjum Hassan's History’s Angel talks about the lives of Muslims face in the India of today. Through Alif Mohammad, a history teacher in Delhi, Hassan highlights the day-to-day struggle of an Indian Muslim. She mentions lynching on trains, discrimination Muslims face while finding a house, the rise of religious extremism among Muslims and the snide remarks they get because of their food, dressing and culture. While taking the story forward, Hassan gives the readers a beautiful tour of Delhi. For someone who has lived in Delhi for a few years, some parts in the story made me nostalgic about the quintessential 'Dilli walli' vibe.
While the premise initially excited me, I couldn't really love this book. There is just too much happening in it. Every other situation in book transports Alif back in time and makes him ponder over some historical figure or event. The frequent and longish references to the past seem like a roadblock in the flow of the story. Personally, I felt the book very history heavy, digressing my mind away from the actual narrative. I did like the second half of the book where the story finally picks up pace. However, the story seemed to flow all over the place and I had to struggle to keep up my interest overall.
While the premise initially excited me, I couldn't really love this book. There is just too much happening in it. Every other situation in book transports Alif back in time and makes him ponder over some historical figure or event. The frequent and longish references to the past seem like a roadblock in the flow of the story. Personally, I felt the book very history heavy, digressing my mind away from the actual narrative. I did like the second half of the book where the story finally picks up pace. However, the story seemed to flow all over the place and I had to struggle to keep up my interest overall.
2023
June 9, 2024📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing
April 6, 2025
I wanted to like this because it made some interesting points. Unfortunately I was bored. But that’s on me
May 18, 2024
So many rich characters in this book. Alif is constantly flitting in and out of the haze of the past. Tahira has her feet firmly planted in the present and future, with her MBA and corporate dreams. Ganesh is the shrewd world-wise man with a stale marriage. Prerna forms the nostalgic love interest for Alif. Alif’s parents Shagufta-the housewife with a social circle to envy, and Mahtab - the reticent police officer. Ahmad, the adopted help whose been demanding money for a religious pilgrimage, teetering the edge of complete religious immersion. Miss Moloy, the sensible friend, the Arya Samaji brining reason and practicing removal of the frills traditional religious practices bring. Farouk, the money-man with a shoe business and his efforts to edge ever so closer to the next rung of social strata dividing Delhi society.
All of these everyday, almost mundane characters’ lives set against the backdrop of the creeping but not unnoticeable anti-Muslim sentiment in Delhi and the rest of the country.
This made for a great read. For me, Alif’s immersion in history was a bit much at times, but other than that felt it was brilliantly written.
All of these everyday, almost mundane characters’ lives set against the backdrop of the creeping but not unnoticeable anti-Muslim sentiment in Delhi and the rest of the country.
This made for a great read. For me, Alif’s immersion in history was a bit much at times, but other than that felt it was brilliantly written.
March 3, 2024
Really enjoyed reading this book. It’s easy to get into, and the characters are well crafted. I learnt one or two tricks about how to weave a story layered with many pleasant deviations. As a non Urdu/Hindi speaker, I did struggle a bit with the references to poems. While reading the book, I was taken right into Center of the mundane life of the common man protagonist, and I could even picture some characters in my mundane real life who would behave/act in a similar manner to the characters in the novel. I’d recommend it to anyone wishing to explore contemporary urban North India, and also learn a bit of history in the process!
August 6, 2024
throughout i felt like this was a love letter to dilli and nehru's discovery of india which isn't a bad thing at all except i was not in the mood for alif's kinda love
September 29, 2023
‘The past always seems simple from a distance... in fact it is full of inexhaustibly interesting mysteries.’
Delhi, 2019. Alif is caught between past and present, much like the city he calls home. As a Muslim living in an extremely polarizing moment in India's history, Alif tries to lead a quiet life. His days are spent navigating between his increasingly circumscribed job as a school history teacher, his dutiful visits to his ageing parents and his halting attempts to support the ambitions of his enterprising wife. But when an incident with a student augurs sinister repercussions for Alif, the hard-won calm of his humdrum life is irrevocably shattered. The reappearance of a woman he once loved further unmoors him even as the threat of violence looms over his beloved city. As chaos engulfs him, will he find refuge in his abiding love of history? Or will he be forced to surrender to the tyranny of the unavoidable present?
I have been a long-time admirer of Anjum Hasan's work, and count myself lucky to have had the additional pleasure of being her editor in the past. Her latest novel, "History's Angel", amply displays her marvellous talents as a storyteller. Here she delves deeply into questions about the modern Muslim identity and the unfinished business of Partition. And it’s amazing to see how she focuses on interior lives and domestic anxieties to explore larger ideas about our conflicted relationship to the past.
We need to see more fiction that fearlessly interrogates the concerns of the present. In this regard, "History's Angel" is perfectly in conversation with another fantastic recent novel, Devika Rege's "Quarterlife". While the focus and approach of each novel varies, both are united in spirit, and offer a unique glimpse into the churn of contemporary India. Novels like these bode well for the future of Indian fiction.
Delhi, 2019. Alif is caught between past and present, much like the city he calls home. As a Muslim living in an extremely polarizing moment in India's history, Alif tries to lead a quiet life. His days are spent navigating between his increasingly circumscribed job as a school history teacher, his dutiful visits to his ageing parents and his halting attempts to support the ambitions of his enterprising wife. But when an incident with a student augurs sinister repercussions for Alif, the hard-won calm of his humdrum life is irrevocably shattered. The reappearance of a woman he once loved further unmoors him even as the threat of violence looms over his beloved city. As chaos engulfs him, will he find refuge in his abiding love of history? Or will he be forced to surrender to the tyranny of the unavoidable present?
I have been a long-time admirer of Anjum Hasan's work, and count myself lucky to have had the additional pleasure of being her editor in the past. Her latest novel, "History's Angel", amply displays her marvellous talents as a storyteller. Here she delves deeply into questions about the modern Muslim identity and the unfinished business of Partition. And it’s amazing to see how she focuses on interior lives and domestic anxieties to explore larger ideas about our conflicted relationship to the past.
We need to see more fiction that fearlessly interrogates the concerns of the present. In this regard, "History's Angel" is perfectly in conversation with another fantastic recent novel, Devika Rege's "Quarterlife". While the focus and approach of each novel varies, both are united in spirit, and offer a unique glimpse into the churn of contemporary India. Novels like these bode well for the future of Indian fiction.
August 14, 2023
History's Angel by Anjum Hasan is a contemporary fiction based in Delhi of current times. Often deriving a comparison with India's rich history, where Muslims have been a significant contributor, Anjum Hasan, through a set of essential characters, subtly takes a jab at the gradual decline of camaraderie and the rise of intolerance.
Through the character of Alif, a history teacher in a primary school, the author highlights the day-to-day struggle of an Indian Muslim. Alif, who instinctively reacts to a derogatory remark by one of his students against Muslims, is subject to disciplinary action and is terminated from his job. His wife, an ambitious woman who wants to upscale her life, cannot find a suitable apartment for rent due to her religion. Alif's father, a retired sub-inspector, cannot forget that he could not save the life of several innocent Muslims during a mass firing on the orders of the government. In a small attempt to balance the story, in a few pages, the author also highlights the rise of religious extremism among Muslims and the decline of Sufism which is more tolerant and moderate. It is appreciative of the author writing about such an essential subject in a very subtle tone. However, I also felt this book is only a one-sided view of the problem where one side of the coin has been portrayed as the oppressed and the other as the oppressor. That's where I feel this book failed to leave an impact. This subject is complex and deeply rooted, where the oppressed and oppressors often keep changing their positions in an act of retaliation.
From a writing style perspective, readers will enjoy the reference to some of the great poets and their poetries. History fanatics will also enjoy historical references. But they may also wonder where the story is heading due to its unstructured flow. The abrupt ending of the book also needed some work. It's often evident throughout the novel that the focus has been more on keeping the tone subtle and mild than crafting a more balanced and structured story.
Through the character of Alif, a history teacher in a primary school, the author highlights the day-to-day struggle of an Indian Muslim. Alif, who instinctively reacts to a derogatory remark by one of his students against Muslims, is subject to disciplinary action and is terminated from his job. His wife, an ambitious woman who wants to upscale her life, cannot find a suitable apartment for rent due to her religion. Alif's father, a retired sub-inspector, cannot forget that he could not save the life of several innocent Muslims during a mass firing on the orders of the government. In a small attempt to balance the story, in a few pages, the author also highlights the rise of religious extremism among Muslims and the decline of Sufism which is more tolerant and moderate. It is appreciative of the author writing about such an essential subject in a very subtle tone. However, I also felt this book is only a one-sided view of the problem where one side of the coin has been portrayed as the oppressed and the other as the oppressor. That's where I feel this book failed to leave an impact. This subject is complex and deeply rooted, where the oppressed and oppressors often keep changing their positions in an act of retaliation.
From a writing style perspective, readers will enjoy the reference to some of the great poets and their poetries. History fanatics will also enjoy historical references. But they may also wonder where the story is heading due to its unstructured flow. The abrupt ending of the book also needed some work. It's often evident throughout the novel that the focus has been more on keeping the tone subtle and mild than crafting a more balanced and structured story.
May 9, 2024
In the tapestry of contemporary literature, ‘History’s Angel’ emerges as a profound narrative that captures the essence of an era. Anjum Hasan weaves a tale rich and intricate through the fabric of time, echoing the voices of generations past and present. It is a tale spun with threads of introspection and revelation, where Alif, the contemplative history teacher, serves as our guide through the labyrinth of modern India's soul. With a voice as delicate as it is daring, ‘History’s Angel’ holds a mirror to society with a grace that rivals the monsoons of the South.
Through Alif's eyes, Hasan brings to life the struggles and triumphs of identity, belonging, and legacy. Her prose waltzes like rain upon the parched earth of our collective consciousness, bringing forth a bloom of characters rich in depth and color. Each chapter unfurls like the petals of a lotus, revealing the delicate interplay of light and shadow in the lives of those who walk the tightrope between tradition and change. 'History's Angel' is not merely a book; it is a journey through the alleys of nostalgia, the boulevards of aspiration, and the muted, unseen trails of the heart.
As the narrative unfolds, one is transported to the bustling streets and tranquil countryside of South India, where every stone and stream tells a story. The scent of jasmine lingers on the pages, mingling with the spice-laden air of the markets, inviting the reader to partake in a feast for the senses. In this literary feast, Hasan serves a course that satiates the intellect and stirs the spirit.
With a voice as lyrical as it is profound, 'History's Angel' stands as a beacon of hope in a world adrift. It is a testament to the enduring power of stories, a reminder that within the pages of a book lies the ability to transcend boundaries and touch lives.
Through Alif's eyes, Hasan brings to life the struggles and triumphs of identity, belonging, and legacy. Her prose waltzes like rain upon the parched earth of our collective consciousness, bringing forth a bloom of characters rich in depth and color. Each chapter unfurls like the petals of a lotus, revealing the delicate interplay of light and shadow in the lives of those who walk the tightrope between tradition and change. 'History's Angel' is not merely a book; it is a journey through the alleys of nostalgia, the boulevards of aspiration, and the muted, unseen trails of the heart.
As the narrative unfolds, one is transported to the bustling streets and tranquil countryside of South India, where every stone and stream tells a story. The scent of jasmine lingers on the pages, mingling with the spice-laden air of the markets, inviting the reader to partake in a feast for the senses. In this literary feast, Hasan serves a course that satiates the intellect and stirs the spirit.
With a voice as lyrical as it is profound, 'History's Angel' stands as a beacon of hope in a world adrift. It is a testament to the enduring power of stories, a reminder that within the pages of a book lies the ability to transcend boundaries and touch lives.
August 15, 2024
I forget why I wanted to read this book, but I found it on my shelves and decided it was time.
This is an odd novel that has a few hardly visible storylines that get easily overwhelmed by historical ruminations and the odd quote of Indian poetry.
Its setting in Delhi was promising, especially for people like me who have been there 27 years ago. Its focus on the current discord between Muslims and Hindus (thank you, Narendra Modi) and its historical roots was well found as well. But somehow it seemed that this book was written for a different demographic that excluded me, especially due to lots of untranslated Urdu/Hindi and Sanskrit phrases that would resonate with the 1.3 billion Indians out there, but don’t work with an international audience. The UK-based publisher might have done efforts providing translations for these.
The same goes for all the obscure historical references that are positioned more as a teaching opportunity (the protagonist is a history teacher) than as relevant for the story.
Perhaps I would have liked this novel more if I were Indian (rather than just an employee of an Indian company).
2.5/5 *
This is an odd novel that has a few hardly visible storylines that get easily overwhelmed by historical ruminations and the odd quote of Indian poetry.
Its setting in Delhi was promising, especially for people like me who have been there 27 years ago. Its focus on the current discord between Muslims and Hindus (thank you, Narendra Modi) and its historical roots was well found as well. But somehow it seemed that this book was written for a different demographic that excluded me, especially due to lots of untranslated Urdu/Hindi and Sanskrit phrases that would resonate with the 1.3 billion Indians out there, but don’t work with an international audience. The UK-based publisher might have done efforts providing translations for these.
The same goes for all the obscure historical references that are positioned more as a teaching opportunity (the protagonist is a history teacher) than as relevant for the story.
Perhaps I would have liked this novel more if I were Indian (rather than just an employee of an Indian company).
2.5/5 *
March 12, 2024
This book was interesting at first, especially life in old Delhi. But it then got a bit wearying. Perhaps that is what it is trying to convey - a sense of malaise with which the Muslim population has to contend because of how the rest of the city sees them. The main character who teaches history keeps looking back to the past (but then he is a history teacher in a historical city) , his wife and son seem to be more forward looking and want to better themselves. Even his elderly father seems to know what he needs to do to get past his malaise. Perhaps that’s what the book is trying to do - present the different approaches of members of a family to a common predicament? Anyway, I found the last 20 percent of the book could not hold my attention and I speed read it to the end.
May 19, 2024
‘Arre bhai, Khilji is dead and gone,’ says Sports Sir. ‘Why are we fighting over him?’
***
This is a story about history, and the painfully flawed Indians who dip into it day in and day out to comfort themselves and try to save the next generation as the country sets everyone on fire.
No matter what your religious beliefs may be, the book is filled with barbs that sting you without mercy, making you gasp with laughter as well as shocked pain in the same breath.
'History's Angel' is meant to be read slowly, its imagery savoured with care, and with a pen or highlighter in hand to mark the most beautiful passages so you can meditate on them later. Be prepared for your ink to dry out soon.
***
This is a story about history, and the painfully flawed Indians who dip into it day in and day out to comfort themselves and try to save the next generation as the country sets everyone on fire.
No matter what your religious beliefs may be, the book is filled with barbs that sting you without mercy, making you gasp with laughter as well as shocked pain in the same breath.
'History's Angel' is meant to be read slowly, its imagery savoured with care, and with a pen or highlighter in hand to mark the most beautiful passages so you can meditate on them later. Be prepared for your ink to dry out soon.
July 3, 2024
I have always been fascinated by history. By the stories of people, places and events that have, from the times immemorial come together to culminate the present, and dictate the future – of ours and of the generations to come.
To know history, to understand it, not merely as facts presented to us but as the expansive account of whys and hows of it, takes us closer to understanding the people who came before us, their journeys and the lessons they leave for us. Sometimes it reverberate with echoes that shape our collective conscience.
For a person drunk on the potent potion of history, because he sees not only the stories of the eras gone by but also live by the truths they pose for anybody concerned enough to observe, can the furore of political and social realities of present time, really unsettle?
I think it is with this premise that Hasan carve the character of Alif in this book. A school history teacher, living in Delhi in current times. A teacher, so engrossed by the monuments and chronicles of one of the oldest cities of the country, that he has no instinct in him to brood over the anxieties that ripple across the city and the nation, the uncertainties set out to alter the course of our collective memory and wisdom.
What better place than Delhi to situate such novel in - witness to countless epochs and standing firm amid the onslaught meant to batter its soul, emerging stronger and victorious each time, steering to uphold the social camaraderie that has saved it in desperate times. Alif’s journey in the city then, becomes a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and the ways in which history shapes us even as we strive to shape our own destinies.
In a subdued and compelling tone, Hasan paints a vivid portrait of Delhi’s streets, homes and hearts. She explores themes of identity, belonging, and the search for meaning in a world torn apart by conflict and division. A world where even in the face of widening fissures, hope and humanity are asserted and celebrated, drawing its sustenance from a deep historical perspective.
To know history, to understand it, not merely as facts presented to us but as the expansive account of whys and hows of it, takes us closer to understanding the people who came before us, their journeys and the lessons they leave for us. Sometimes it reverberate with echoes that shape our collective conscience.
For a person drunk on the potent potion of history, because he sees not only the stories of the eras gone by but also live by the truths they pose for anybody concerned enough to observe, can the furore of political and social realities of present time, really unsettle?
I think it is with this premise that Hasan carve the character of Alif in this book. A school history teacher, living in Delhi in current times. A teacher, so engrossed by the monuments and chronicles of one of the oldest cities of the country, that he has no instinct in him to brood over the anxieties that ripple across the city and the nation, the uncertainties set out to alter the course of our collective memory and wisdom.
What better place than Delhi to situate such novel in - witness to countless epochs and standing firm amid the onslaught meant to batter its soul, emerging stronger and victorious each time, steering to uphold the social camaraderie that has saved it in desperate times. Alif’s journey in the city then, becomes a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, and the ways in which history shapes us even as we strive to shape our own destinies.
In a subdued and compelling tone, Hasan paints a vivid portrait of Delhi’s streets, homes and hearts. She explores themes of identity, belonging, and the search for meaning in a world torn apart by conflict and division. A world where even in the face of widening fissures, hope and humanity are asserted and celebrated, drawing its sustenance from a deep historical perspective.
August 22, 2023
Loved this book! Anjum Hasan brings to life the decrepit parts of Old Delhi, and the confusions, contradictions and anxieties of Muslims in India through the eyes of an idealistic, old-world school teacher of history. She has an extraordinary eye for detail, drawing attention to the minutiae of everyday life in a Muslim household or history and monuments of the glory days of Mughal rule to illustrate the way Indian society has changed, the way the past and the present are still connected albeit meaninglessly. A book to be savored.
July 9, 2023
This book is a perfect example of literary fiction where every word is important and it's placing within the sentence matters. You need to read this book like poetry. I wasn't surprised to find out when I finished the book that the author is more famous as a poet than as a writer of prose. The precise and careful language convey a strong sense of place and time and I found the images in my mind to be vivid. This is a lovely book.
July 31, 2023
I found it difficult to read on the app, hence a limited review.
This is an important book addressing a series of interventions occurring in India affecting everyday lives of Muslims and other minority groups in India.
Alif teaches history to young students in a times when history is being revised and past is being erased. Further a global contraction of arts and humanities education and a push towards STEM also makes his career challenging.
An important book for our times.
This is an important book addressing a series of interventions occurring in India affecting everyday lives of Muslims and other minority groups in India.
Alif teaches history to young students in a times when history is being revised and past is being erased. Further a global contraction of arts and humanities education and a push towards STEM also makes his career challenging.
An important book for our times.
April 14, 2024
The people in this book are not really people, but only stick-figure ideologues. They are balloons filled with sharp opinions chalked by the author. And the conversations are only facebook comments but by god am I willing to overlook this for the nostalgia this book induces. I mean what is better than a History teacher in a Delhi private school who takes his students to Mughal monuments trying to dispel nationalist myths. What can feel more homelike than that, huh?
July 26, 2024
I do know enough about the geography of Dehli to appreciate the frequent references to the city. I was bothered by the frequent Urdu sentences with no English translation. The story moved too slowly. I had read so many rave reviews that I kept trying to finish the book. Finally felt it was not worth my time. Will read the last chapter to see if I was wrong to give up. If so, will return to the middle where I left off.
January 25, 2025
The first 200 pages were a boring drag – but the last 80 or so were urgent and impassioned, the novel's constant, islamophobic background noise peaking in a violent crescendo. There's also a lot of fairly interesting debate about the purpose and rewriting of history, religion's place within that, and secular hypocrisy. Rawat, whenever she appeared, was an absolute scene-stealer. However, the repetitive, droning veneration of Old Delhi and its past great leaders just put me to sleep.
August 23, 2023
I loved this. A real novel of ideas: that is idea as plot, where much is at stake. The main character is a history teacher and a Muslim in the anti-Muslim India of Modi, and he is obsessed by history and simultaneously living through it. The way the two things intersect is to be savored. Subtle, lively, lovely book
January 20, 2024
I loved the part where a parent asks about why the kid needs to learn history and how so many people only value making if money. No thoughts on history repeating itself, no thoughts on the value of understanding history, and the weird blindness that only a Hindu can teach Indian history. I really liked how through one man you see history repeating itself- and he’s a history teacher.
July 14, 2023
4.5 stars to another one knocked out of the park by Anjum Hasan. She has really captured the sense of contemporary helplessness and the reluctant desire to act on things that we have very little control or consequence over.
August 12, 2023
A good story of a Alif, a history teacher fired from his school because he reacted to a student who insulted his Muslim heritage. It’s a story of the turmoil and inequality of post partition life in India.
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May 20, 2025An excellent literary work on the modern state of India and how Muslims are subconsciously all marginalized and how while it is overt as well, they are persecuted in many employment areas and housing areas. The fact that Alif's wife Tahira strongly reacts to it pulled my heartstrings. A must read!
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