The Heart Divided is a pre-Partition saga centred on two sisters, Zohra and Sughra Jamaluddin, who quarrel over the merits of Congress and the Muslim League. Mirroring the author’s own ‘conversion’ to the idea of a Muslim State, the novel weaves political events — the 1938 League session in Patna, the Lahore Resolution — into a series of love stories. With a breeziness ahead of its time, Mumtaz tweaks traditional marriage from four significant angles: the girls’ brother and Zohra’s Hindu friend Mohini fall in love; Sughra’s arranged marriage is painfully unhappy; Zohra’s friend Najma is forcibly wed to a widower, mercifully divorced, and then considered unmarriageable; and Zohra falls for a man her family deems lower-class. Some manage to break the rules, some do not, but all dream of unions based on intellectual parity.
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