Queenie Bligh’s neighbours don’t approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but with her husband, Bernard, not back from the war, she has little choice in the matter. Told in Woodsley’s skeptical, self-mocking and good-humored voice, Mittelholzer creates a brilliantly atmospheric setting for his characters and their terrified discovery that this is not a place where they can be at home.

The Crow Eaters - Wikipedia

This list is The Big Jubilee Read and features 70 titles – ten from each decade of the Queen’s reign. She was his Beggar Maid, ‘meek and voluptuous, with her shy white feet’, and he was her knight, content to sit and adore her. The Muslim majority regions of Punjab and Bengal were divided, with west Punjab and east Bengal forming west and east Pakistan and India in the middle of the two (Hassan: 1993).Mistryraises some problems of communityand cultural crisis whichare the main issues under the subaltern studies. Seeking fortune and opportunity, Faredoon ‘Freddy’ Junglewalla and his family – his pregnant wife, infant daughter, and burdensome mother-in-law – move from their ancestral village in rural India to the bustling metropolis of Lahore. And a murder attempt on Jerbanoo--which flops: her window-ledge near-immolation scene, played before thrilled crowds and desperate firemen, establishes her more firmly than ever as an elemental force, probably immortal. Readers of Urdu will finally be able to catch up with The Crow Eaters, one of the finest novels to have come out ofPakistan. On a hot January evening that he will remember for decades, Elias Cole first catches sight of Saffia Kamara, the wife of a charismatic colleague.

THE CROW EATERS BY BAPSI SIDHWA - Academia.edu THE CROW EATERS BY BAPSI SIDHWA - Academia.edu

I wish she could grant a leave of absence to Jerbanoo and ask her to take her cleansing ritual right in the midst of other straight-laced novels. With its stunning evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Columnis a classic of Muslim life. Elsewhere in the hospital, Kai, a gifted young surgeon, is desperately trying to forget the pain of a lost love that torments him as much as the mental scars he still bears from the civil war that has left an entire people with terrible secrets to keep. The Pakistani novel, assuming that such a thing exists, is inclined to hold its head high among lofty and abstract ideals, being mindful of all possible Sacred Cows.Ralph will rise from parish priest to the inner circles of the Vatican … but his passion for Meggie will follow him all the days of his life. Hilarity aside, I was particularly struck by its stark portrayal of the Parsi community — and by a Parsi no less.