Shy twelve-year-old Nisha, forced to flee her home with her Hindu family during the 1947 partition of India, tries to find her voice and make sense of the world falling apart around her by writing to her deceased Muslim mother in the pages of her diary.

"India, 1947. In a village in Bengal live three sisters, daughters of a well-respected doctor. Priya: intelligent and idealistic, resolved to follow in her father's footsteps and become a doctor though society frowns on it. Deepa: the beauty, determined to make a marriage that will bring her family joy and status. Jamini: devout, sharp-eyed, and a talented quiltmaker, with deeper passions than she reveals. Theirs is a home of love and safety, a refuge...

Delhi, 1946. Ma and Bappu are liberal intellectuals teaching at the local university. Their fourteen year-old daughter - precocious, headstrong Alma - is soon to be married to a young man training to be a doctor: Alma is mostly interested in the wedding shoes and in spinning wild stories about evil spirits for her beloved younger sister Roop, a restless child obsessed with death. Times are bad for girls in India. The long-awaited independence from...

When twelve-year-old Maya and big sister Zara set off on their own from Delhi to their grandmother's home of Aminpur, a small town in Northern India, they become separated and Maya decides to continue their quest to find a chest of family treasures that their grandmother's family left behind when they fled from India to Pakistan during the Great Partition.

A young girl leaves her beloved doll behind when she must make the journey from India to Pakistan in the aftermath of their partition by the British government.

As the partition of India nears in 1947 bringing violence even to Jalandhar, Tariq, a Muslim, finds himself caught between his forbidden interest in Anupreet, a Sikh girl, and Margaret, a British girl whose affection for him might help with his dream of studying at Oxford.

Novel based on the accounts of riots of the partition of India in 1947.

Novel based on the accounts of riots of the partition of India in 1947.

"[R]evolves around Basharat and his family, Indian Muslims forced to relocate to Pakistan during Partition. Through one absurd anecdote after another, Basharat-- awash in nostalgia, half-baked schemes, and sorrow-- emerges as a holy fool. A uniquely authentic portrait of postcolonialism and homesickness" -- page 4 of cover.