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Having just read through this book again, I find myself agreeing with what I said almost five years ago. This book is perhaps the definitive book on India’s partition, the murderous devastation it left in its wake, and how those wounds continue to fester. Yet, so much has changed in the last five years that I come to this book with new questions. While Kashmir is still one of the biggest potential flashpoints in the world, the main story out of India now is the rise Prime Minister Modi and Hindu nationalism. The NPR podcast “Throughline” did an excellent episode on the roots of Hindu nationalism not too long ago, which is tangential in a lot of ways to this book. However, this book only touches upon Hindu nationalism’s roots in hardline groups like the RSSS, which was responsible for so much violence and instability during the partition. Indeed, just as this book preserves a moment in history, so too does this book reflect that moment in the mid 2010s when this biggest regional concern was just another Kashmir conflict going nuclear. While this book still serves as a great guide to those bloody years before and after partition, more needs to be researched and written about the sad state of India’s internal politics and how it connects to its past. But to sum things up: Atmospheric. Loaded with great, unique, individual characters. Lots of introspection on Charlie's part, but he's clever and smart, so it never gets dull. Wonderful Maine settings with the water, marshes, woods, etc. This would make a great Halloween-time read, sorry I saved it for after the holiday, but there's always next year. :D
If I have to tell you to speak up again, I’ll hit you a slap across this altar and there’s not a soul in the church that would blame me for it. I also felt like the author showed the human side of all the major players. He includes so much primary material like journal/diary entries, speech transcripts, newspaper articles, government documents, memoirs, letters, first hand testimonies, journalist's accounts and many others to convey the thoughts and perspectives of each person and to paint a picture of what was happening in that time and place. Other reviewers complained that he doesn't use primary sources which confuses me based on what he includes in the book, but I'll have to look at his references when I receive my copy to see what he lists. He certainly mentions a plethora of primary sources but I guess it's not clear how he came about them (whether in their original format or as a secondary source from others' research). Either way, he really made the people come alive in his narrative with the material he used. At the outset, Hajari explains that he is seeking to understand the experience of partition, not to lay blame. To that end, he works to maintain his objectivity. Everyone involved made mistakes, but Hajari does a good job of showing those mistakes in context, providing some understanding of why they occurred.The accuracy of the illnesses kill count % and exact costs of things e.g. financing or these armies were also excellent information and how different currencies worked. We think of the Renaissance as a shining era of human achievementa pinnacle of artistic genius and humanist brilliance, the time of Shakespeare, Michelangelo, and Montaigne. Yet it was also an age of constant, harrowing warfare. Armies, not philosophers, shaped the face of Europe as modern nation-states emerged from feudal society.
Chaos and murder arrive in Charlie Parker’s hometown of Portland, Maine, with two connected crimes in the latest novel in #1 nationally bestselling author John Connolly’s “flawless and highly suspenseful” ( PopSugar ) series. This is a very difficult book to read because of the descriptions of violence. However, it's important to the understanding of what happened and what is still happening today. Before reading the book, I knew little about the division of India, now I can see how stressful it was. The author points out that much of the violence in the Middle East today had it's roots in that time. Pakistan feared India and as a result gave asylum to the Taliban and other extremist groups.The book presents itself as being taken from primary sources – yet this is not true. In fact the author often took narratives presented in other earlier works, and re-made them for his own work. Hearing the first-person account of someone is quite powerful if you think the author had interviewed them, or had rewritten a first-person account; it is quite misleading when you realize the author had re-imagined a story someone else had written about. Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own. The book begins with up close and personal stories on the 3 leaders: Jawaharlal Nehru, Mohandas Ghandi and Mohammad Ali Jinnah. This warm and engaging part is followed by the politics and violence of the independence movement followed by the politics and violence of achieving independence. The book "Indian Summer" tells this story with emphasis on the British role, this book focuses on the role of the Indians. It is clearly meticulously researched and brought together but can get a bit repetitive as in different chapters just describe some of the same times and events just with a different focus. Often the information comes from diary observations of a range of sources; e.g. priests, nobles, generals, judges and/or soldiers or peddlers themselves.
Includes history leading to and during the Partition only, with the exception of a brief chapter on the legacy In the second and titular story, Charlie is hired by a woman who is trying to recover some items stolen from her, items that had once belonged to her dead daughter. The thieves are staying at The Braycott Hotel, a hotel noted mainly for its discretion. As a result, no children are allowed so why, suddenly, are patrons complaining that their sleep is being disturbed by the laughter of a child in the hall late at night? A couple of the stories weren't my thing (Siren felt a touch heavy-handed, as though Atwood needed you to know how much she was rolling her eyes), but I either learned from them or learned about my likes and dislikes in the process.Naturally, what Ayesha Jalal once called as "the central historical event in 20th century South Asia" has spawned a rich body of literature which range from academic histories (An example is "Independence and Partition" by Sucheta Mahajan) to biographies ( "The Sole Spokesman" ,a biography of Mohammed Jinnah by Ayesha Jalal) to memoirs ("An American witness to India's partition" by Phillips Talbot) to short stories (Works of Saadat Hasan Manto including the brilliant "Toba Tek Singh") to novels ("Train to Pakistan" by Khushwant Singh) to oral histories ("The other side of silence" by Urvashi Bhutalia). Hussy” by Caroline O’Donoghue - porno zvaigzne mēģina pārprofilēties uz citu auditoriju (bet varbūt par tiesībām lemt pašai); TYGRESS ~ Claire Kodha who is just affirming herself as a brilliant writer as she plays with identity, motherhood, parental/child relationships and magical realism in this story. BRILLIANT.
I really loved this book. As difficult of a topic as it is, it was written so well that it was incredibly engaging, easy to follow and highly informative. There were times that my eyes widened and my mouth fell open as I heard what happened. The military junta would join with the mullahs to rally around religion, instead of to the secular society envisioned by Jinnah The Furies by John Connolly is actually two novellas connected by theme and a somewhat disreputable hotel. In the first story, The Sisters Strange, Charlie Parker is hired by a man to protect the woman he loves from a dangerous man. Trouble is, this dangerous man not only has a relationship with the woman in question but with her sister as well. In his attempt to help the sisters, Charlie finds himself drawn into what should be a simple theft of some valuable coins but this is a Charlie Parker thriller so of course nothing is as simple as it seems. The responsibility for the Partition falls more or less equally to the founders Nehru and Jinnah who failed to foresee the results
A compelling, entertaining and thought-provoking collection that showcases brilliant writing through a broad range of different styles and approaches. While trying to choose a recent book on the history of the India-Pakistan partition these two came up frequently (along with Yasmin Khan's Great Partition written in 2007). It was difficult for me to determine the differences between them, so I decided to read and review both. I haven't had an opportunity to read the Khan book yet, which looks like a more scholarly alternative. Similarly, Indian historian Ramachandra Guha has written about "India after Gandhi". He is quoted extensively by Keay, and I wonder: why not just read Guha? I am unable to answer that at this time, and will have to find out later. If India wants her bloodbath, she shall have it!" Mahatma Gandhi to Archibald Wavell, 27th Aug, 1946 Quinn informs Parker about the occult connection to the investigation, which is evident when certain symbols are found not only at the murder scenes, but also in Buker’s room at a local flophouse along with a new tattoo on his forearm. The inevitable meeting between Buker and the Sisters Strange will occur. They know what he is about and are more than capable of handling themselves to overcome any threat he may pose. As skilled as Parker is at his job, he appears to be a mere bystander in this story.
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