Cracking India (Sidhwa)

Book Reviews
Cracking India is a novel in which heartbreak coexists with slapstick, where awful jokes about forefathers and foreskins give way to lines of glowing beauty ("The moonlight settles like a layer of ashes over Lahore"). The author’s capacity for bringing an assortment of characters vividly to life is enviable.
New York Times Book Review


[Sidhwa] has told a sweet and amusing tale filled with the worst atrocities imaginable; she has concocted a girlishly romantic love story which is driven by the most militant feminism; above all, she has turned her gaze upon the domestic comedy of a Pakistani family in the 1940s and somehow managed to evoke the great political upheavals of the age.
Washington Post Book World


With understated prose and a seemingly simple narrative, Sidhwa’s novel conveys the human suffering of Partition far more effectively than a dozen history books.... Cracking India illustrates the power of good fiction: a historical tragedy comes alive, yielding insight into both the past and the subcontinent’s turbulent present.
USA Today


The spirited daughter of an affluent Parsee family narrates the story of the cracking of India, as she witnesses Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Parsees, and Sikhs fight for their land and their lives.
London Review of Books


Sidhwa's novel Cracking India is on of the finest responses made to the horror of the division of the subcontinent.
Salman Rushdie - The New Yorker


Sidhwa tempers Lenny’s hyper-awareness by capturing the whole range of her fears and joys as her innocence becomes another casualty of the violence among Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus.
Publishers Weekly