A new 1999 translation of A short story and Two Novellas of a leading Winning of Urdu fiction in India, who was awarded the Bhartiya Jnanpith, India’s highest literary award. The days and months that preceded and followed August 1947 were filled with most horrific acts of physical violence. There were violations of trust; they wounded and maimed the psyches of their victims, leaving the bodies intact. And their time – that season of betrayals – lasted longer than just several months.Sita Mirchandani, a Hindu refugee from Singh, now living in India; Salma and Surayya, two Muslim girls from U.P. who are forced to move to Pakistan; Tanvir Fatima is in Karachi and not quiet sure why she is there – these are the characters who inhabit these works of fiction. Originally published as Sitaharan, Housing Society and Patjhad ki Awaz, the stories explore the cataclysmic events that have unveiled the lives of these women and how each, in her own way, battles with a state of exile that is more internal than external. Together they unfold a series of be-trayals – historical, political, personal – and how the women struggle to come to terms with them.
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