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Product Description
Eight-year-old Lenny, spirited daughter of an affluent Parsee family, narrates the story of the breaking of India as she witnesses Muslims, Hindus, Christians, and Sikhs fight for their land and their lives during the dividing of the country into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan in 1947. This 1991 Liberatur Prize winner, NYT Notable Book and ALA Notable nominee is now available in paperback for the first time.
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My world is compressed. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Published as Ice Candy Man and Cracking India (and made into a movie called Earth) the book tells the story of the partition. Initially I was put of by the fact that we had a child narrator, but Lenny's insights and interpretations of the events around her can be almost hilarious and work very well in what is otherwise an almost violent read. Much has been made of the pro-Pakistani slant to the book, it's a bias that's hard to deny but it is an almost impossible to task to find literature on the partition, both from fact or fiction that is truly objective. Sidwa presents a view point and it is a view point shared by many and therefore should be read for that reason alone. As a work of literature this is almost with equal and is the finest piece of partition fiction I have read to date. It's not a tale of politicians, but of people and how they react to the events unfolding. Central to the story are the many men of all religions courting Lenny's Ayah, we meet the Ice Candy Man, the masseur, the butcher all vie for her affections. The book, though it takes a few chapters to get going soon becomes impossible to put down, the mixture of humour and violence can leave one laughing one minute and almost reduced to tears the next. A must read.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Bapsi Sidhwa's Cracking India will expand and alter your view of India, Pakistan, and the British Raj. Using a child-narrator, a literary device over-employed and often unsuccessful, this author has found the perfect vehicle for conveying the heart-breaking story of the Partition of India in l947, without being coy and without descending into bathos.
Lenny, as the child of a Parsee family, roams freely through the Sikh, Muslim, Hindu, and Parsee society of her household and neighborhood in Lahore. Because she is lame and receiving private schooling, she is at home when momentous events and important conversations occur, and because she is very young and has no ethnic biases, she observes the disintegration of her society with the puzzlement of an outsider.
An active, loving person, Lenny makes us see the personal and emotional costs of the founding of Pakistan, especially to women and children. Whether your interest is historical, literary, or feminist, Cracking India will illuminate the dangers and tragedies of creating artificial geographical boundaries. Mary Whipple
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book a long time ago when it was called "Ice Candy Man". Although I prefer that title to Cracking India, change of title itself seems to be part of plan the novel. The character of the ice candy man represents the cracking of India from a young girl's perspective. There are scenes in the novel that are etched in my memory. I read the book as a young boy and I could still see very clearly how Lenny's mind was working. There were lively and funny events, horribly tragic ones, and then there were shocking moments that had me put aside the book until I recovered.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
One howler, hopefully it's the only one!
I bought this book in order to have the opportunity to spend more time with the wonderful characters I first encountered in Earth, one of my favourite films, which I couldn't bear... Read more
Published 22 months ago by EIR
Cracking India
Cracking India
Having watched the movie 'Earth', based upon 'Bapsi Sidhwa's 'Cracking India' I thought I would read the book, I realise most people would read the book... Read more
Having watched the movie 'Earth', based upon 'Bapsi Sidhwa's 'Cracking India' I thought I would read the book, I realise most people would read the book... Read more
Published on 19 Nov 2009 by Michael France
The partition problem
Various factors played a role in partition: the utterly manipulative role of Winston Churchill and his henchmen in dividing the two countries must be taught in all history books of... Read more
Published on 9 Nov 2008 by harri181
well written but not accurate
miss sidwa claims this to be a historical account but she was only a child herself back then. some people here have said that as a parsi she was an unbiased observer, but the fact... Read more
Published on 5 Dec 2005
warmly felt novel -- but one reviewer is laughable
Sidhwa's book is a warm depiction of one child's experience with an atrocious moment in history.
But what I want to discuss is the comment below, by V. Sharma. Read more
Published on 26 Jun 2005 by "pmlseth"
To read the book you need an open mind
Many books have been wriiten about the partition of India in 1947. But this is the first book,where the story is told from a young child's point of view. Read more
Published on 26 Jun 1999
A world torn apart as seen by a child.
Ms. Sidhwa does a wonderful job of presenting the tensions that exist to this day on the indian subcontinent. Read more
Published on 19 Jan 1999
A completely one-sided, poor excuse for historical fiction
I'm afraid Ms. Sidhwa did not do her homework when researching India's partition. Her novel is filled with inaccuracies, which must be looked at carefully with regard to such a... Read more
Published on 4 Jan 1999
one Holocaust follows another
There have already been many excellent customer reviews of this book, with which I wholeheartedly agree. Read more
Published on 24 May 1998
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