Books with author Bapsi Sidhwa

The 1947 Partition of India is the backdrop for this powerful novel, narrated by a precocious child who describes the brutal transition with chilling veracity. Young Lenny Sethi is kept out of school because she suffers from polio. She spends her days with Ayah, her beautiful nanny, visiting with the large group of admirers that Ayah draws. It is in the company of these working class characters that Lenny learns about religious differences, religious intolerance, and the blossoming genocidal strife on the eve of Partition. As she matures, Lenny begins to identify the differences between the Hindus, Moslems, and Sikhs engaging in political arguments all around her. Lenny enjoys a happy, privileged life in Lahore, but the kidnapping of her beloved Ayah signals a dramatic change. Soon Lenny’s world erupts in religious, ethnic, and racial violence. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, the domestic drama serves as a microcosm for a profound political upheaval.

Feroza Ginwalla, a pampered, protected 16-year-old Pakistani girl, is sent to America by her parents, who are alarmed by the fundamentalism overtaking Pakistan — and their daughter. Hoping that a few months with her uncle, an MIT grad student, will soften the girl’s rigid thinking, they get more than they bargained for: Feroza, enthralled by American culture and her new freedom, insists on staying. A bargain is struck, allowing Feroza to attend college with the understanding that she will return home and marry well. As a student in a small western town, Feroza’s perceptions of America, her homeland, and herself begin to alter. When she falls in love with and wants to marry a Jewish American, her family is aghast. Feroza realizes just how far she has come — and wonders how much further she can go. This delightful coming-of-age novel is both remarkably a remarkably funny and acute portrayal of America as seen through the eyes of a perceptive young immigrant.

The renowned author Bapsi Sidhwa and the equally renowned filmmaker Deepa Mehta share a unique artistic relationship: Mehta adapted Sidhwa’s novel Cracking India for her brilliant film Earth, and here, Sidhwa adapts Mehta’s controversial film Water to the printed page.Set in 1938, against the backdrop of Gandhi’s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, abandoned at a widow’s ashram after the death of her elderly husband. There, she must live in penitence until her death. Unwilling to accept her fate, she becomes a catalyst for change in the widows’s lives. When her friend Kalyani, a beautiful widow-prostitute, falls in love with a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the forbidden affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the ashram’s delicate balance of power. This riveting look at the lives of widows in colonial India is ultimately a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith, and redemption.

Seeking capitalist ventures and fortune, Faredoon ‘Freddy’ Junglewalla moves his family - his pregnant wife, children and belligerent mother-in-law - from their ancestral village in rural India to the bustling metropolis of Lahore. Welcomed by the small but tight-knit Parsi community, Freddy establishes a booming business and his family soon become one of the most respected in Lahore. It seems that the only thing holding Freddy back is his sizeable and burdensome mother-in-law. As his family grows, and events - funny, tragic and life-changing - occur, Freddy’s reach permeates the wider country and an intricate portrait of colonial India is revealed. But when tragedy forces Freddy to rethink his legacy, intimations of historic change loom on the country’s horizon. Wickedly funny and searingly honest, The Crow Eaters is a vibrant portrait of a Parsi family taking its place in colonial India on the brink of the 20th Century, from one of Pakistan’s best-loved and finest novelists. ‘One of the great comic novels of the 20th Century.’ - Hanif Kureishi ‘A novel of immense charm and exuberance . . . Sidhwa consistently imparts the magic and colour of India even in its most down-to-earth aspects.’ - The Times ‘Bapsi Sidhwa’s voice - comic, serious, subtle, always sprightly - is an important one to hear. I’m delighted to see her terrific novels back in print.’ - Salman Rushide ‘The Crow Eaters is an excellent novel . . . The author is a born storyteller.’ - New Statesman ‘Sidhwa writes with an exuberance and geniality which make The Crow Eaters illuminating and memorable.’ - Jim Crace

'The ancient whore, the handmaiden of dimly remembered Hindu kings, the courtesan of Mughal emperors’, the ‘Paris of the East’, Lahore is more than the grandeur of Mughal forts and gardens, mosques and mausoleums; the jewel colours of everlasting spring. It is also the city of poets, the city of love, longing, sin and splendour. This anthology brings together verse and prose: essays, stories, chronicles and profiles by people who have shared a relationship with Lahore. From the mystical poems of Madho Lal Hussain and Bulleh Shah to Iqbal’s ode and Faiz’s lament, from Maclagan and Aijazuddin’s historical treatises and Kipling’s ‘chronicles’ to Samina Quraeshi’s intricate portraits of the Old City and Irfan Husain’s delightful account of Lahori cuisine, City of Sin and Splendour is a marriage of the sacred and profane. While Pran Nevile paints a vivid sketch of Lahore’s Hira Mandi, Shahnaz Kureshy brings alive the legend of Anarkali and Khalid Hasan pays a tribute to the late ‘melody queen’ Nur Jehan. Mohsin Hamid’s essay on exile, Bina Shah’s account of the Karachi vs Lahore debate and Emma Duncan’s piece on elections are essential to the understanding of modern-day Lahore. But the city is also about Lahore remembered. Ved Mehta and Krishen Khanna write about ‘going back’ as Khushwant Singh writes about his pre-Partition years in Lahore. Sara Suleri’s memories of her hometown, the landscapes of Bapsi Sidhwa’s fiction, Khaled Ahmed’s homage to Intezar Hussain and Urvashi Butalia’s Ranamama are tributes to memory as much as they are tributes to remarkable lives and unforgettable places. Including fiction old and new—from Manto and Chughtai to Ashfaq Ahmed and Zulfikar Ghose; Saad Ashraf and Sorayya Khan to Mohsin Hamid and Rukhsana Ahmad, City of Sin and Splendour is a sumptuous collection that reflects the city it celebrates.

At the dawn of the 20th century in Pakistan, Freddy Junglewalla moves his family — pregnant wife, baby daughter, and Jerbanoo, his rotund mother-in-law — from their ancestral forest home to cosmopolitan Lahore. He opens a store, and as his fortunes grow, so does the animosity between Freddy and his mother-in-law. While Freddy prospers under British rule, life with the domineering Jerbanoo is another matter entirely. This exuberant novel, full of rollicking humor, paints a vivid picture of life in the Parsee community.

As a youth, Qasim leaves his tribal village in the remote Himalayas for the plains. Caught up in the strife surrounding the creation of Pakistan, he takes an orphaned girl for his daughter and brings her to the bustling, decadent city of Lahore. Amid the pungent bazaars and crowded streets, Qasim makes his fortune and a home for the two of them. As the years pass, Qasim grows nostalgic about his life in the mountains while his hopelessly romantic teenage daughter, Zaitoon, imagines Qasim's homeland as a region of tall, kindly men who roam the Himalayas like gods. Impulsively, Qasim promises his daughter in marriage to a tribesman, but Zaitoon's fantasy soon becomes a grim reality of unquestioning obedience and unending labor. Bapsi Sidhwa’s acclaimed first novel is a robust, richly plotted story of colliding worlds straddled by a spirited girl for whom escape may not be an option.

Feroza Ginwalla, a pampered, protected 16-year-old Pakistani girl, is sent to America by her parents, who are alarmed by the fundamentalism overtaking Pakistan — and their daughter. Hoping that a few months with her uncle, an MIT grad student, will soften the girl’s rigid thinking, they get more than they bargained for: Feroza, enthralled by American culture and her new freedom, insists on staying. A bargain is struck, allowing Feroza to attend college with the understanding that she will return home and marry well. As a student in a small western town, Feroza’s perceptions of America, her homeland, and herself begin to alter. When she falls in love with and wants to marry a Jewish American, her family is aghast. Feroza realizes just how far she has come — and wonders how much further she can go. This delightful coming-of-age novel is both remarkably funny and a remarkably acute portrayal of America as seen through the eyes of a perceptive young immigrant.

As An American Brat opens in Pakistan, the extended family of sixteen-year-old Feroza Ginwalla, a lively and temperamental young girl, agonize over the decision to send Feroza to America for a three-month holiday? This act of apparent audacity arises from concern over Feroza's conservative attitudes which stem from Pakistan's rising tide of fundamentalism.Feroza's chaperone in America, an uncle only six years her senior, is her guide, friend, and the bane of her existence. Her relationships and adventures shape her alternately hilarious and terrifying perceptions of America. Feroza's family in Pakistan, meanwhile, are in delicious turmoil over the possibility that American ways will ruin her.In the tradition of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club and Gish Jen's Typical American, An American Brat brings insight while entertaining readers with an enormously satisfying story and characters. Sidhwa allows us to see Americans from the point of view of newcomers - an occasionally unsettling perspective - while gently illuminating the potentially destructive influence of fundamentalism on a culture and individuals.