There are only about 70 families in the village. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror or in hiding. In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the new state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people – Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs – were in flight. Written in 1957, it is set during Partition, when the British had departed and hopes of a peaceful transition were in shreds: Khushwant Singh is a prolific author, and his third novel Train to Pakistan is a classic. Using the Recommendations page at his blog, I set myself up with an Indian-Lit to-read shelf at GoodReads, and Train to Pakistan is the first book in this literary journey. A little while ago I decided that I wanted to redress my woeful ignorance of literature from India, (as distinct from expat Anglo-Indian literature) and I asked my friend Vishy for some advice about what to read.
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