A Village Divided: Adha Gaon

Rahi Masoom Reza’s honest and controversial novel unfolds during the latter years of the Raj and the first decade of Independence and portrays the rival halves of a zamindar family, their loves, fights and litigations. It attacks the creation of Pakistan and explores the abolition of the zamindari system and its impact at the village level. A semi-autobiographical work set in the author’s village of Gangauli, in Ghazipur district on the fringes of Avadh, A Village Divided, previously published as The Feuding Families of Village Ganguli, is full of passion and vibrancy, a powerful record of the meeting of Muslim and Hindu cultural traditions that bound Indian society together.