Partitions [Kindle Edition]

I wholeheartedly recommend this book. It is exceptionally well written with moving descriptions of the terrifying circumstances in which four people - two Hindu twins aged six, a young Sikh teenager and an elderly Muslim doctor are made homeless during the time of the partition in India.

I loved the description of the kind, generous, single-minded doctor feeding crumbs to the stray dogs he encounters on his travels. His only desire is to heal and treat the sick - whatever their race or creed. The incredible journeys of the four main characters and all the horror which they experience whilst trying to find a new home are vividly described by Amit Majmudar. This book is absolutely superb - thought provoking and powerful giving a heart-rending insight into the horrendous effects of the partition. Anyone who reads this novel cannot help but be moved by it.

Two young boys are left standing on the platform of a railway station, torn from their mother's grasp by a crowd of people pushing to get onto the train. An elderly doctor arrives at work to find his surgery smashed up beyond use. A teen-aged girl runs away when her male relatives kill her mother, aunts, sisters, and all the other women in the family to preserve their 'honour'. Welcome to 'Partitions' by Amit Majmudar, a book you'll remember long after the final page is turned.

'Partitions' follows the twins, the doctor and the virgin, interweaving three different story-lines set during the human exodus brought about by the formation of the new countries. The book is set in August 1947 in the days following Independence and offers perspectives from all three key religions. The boys are Hindu, the doctor a Muslim and the girl is a Sikh. Unlikely as it might sound, the book is narrated by a dead man called Dr Roshan Jaitly. He uses his ghostly form to flit between the three stories in a way that possibly sounds a bit daft and probably shouldn't work. Oddly and unexpectedly it does work - beautifully, seamlessly and in a very smooth and moving way.

In just over 200 pages, Majmudar moves his four characters like chess pieces on a board, dancing them step by step towards each other then sending them away again. Jaitly's ghost watches over them and comments on their progress. It's not just the focal characters that make the book so memorable; the supporting cast are richly painted and fascinating too. It's the little details that make these people come alive on the page.

This is not the most horrible book I've read about 'Partition' - that accolade must surely go to Kushwant Singh's 'The Train to Pakistan' - but it is one of the most moving and ultimately optimistic books about this horrific time. Buy it - it really is an exceptional book.

This book is so wonderfully written that, as another reviewer has said, it came as no surprise to find the author is also a poet. Some sentences I've re-read just for their beauty.

The story is gripping and harrowing, relating a terrible time, but for the most part avoiding graphic violence (although I did have to skip 3 or 4 pages in the middle so that I could sleep that night!). At times I found myself almost holding my breath, so frightened for the main characters. Man's inhumanity to man never fails to appal, and maltreatment of women, and their acceptance of it, never fails to outrage. Yet these horrors are overcome by the goodness of one unlikely hero, and this is so skilfully sketched by the author.

Here is one small extract which I think sums up not just this little part of history, but the history of the world in general:-

"...sensing, as he has before, a detached kindness guiding the courses and intersections of people, which violent men try to disrupt but succeed in disrupting only for a time."

A masterpiece!