Novel
Sunlight on a Broken Column
Attia Hosain · 1961
Synopsis
In Lucknow, in the thirties, Laila, fifteen, an orphan from a wealthy Muslim family of taluqdars, grows up in her grandfather's house, with her aunts Abida and Majida and her cousin Zahra, and keeps purdah despite the Western education her father wanted for her. When her grandfather dies, her uncle Hamid, liberal in words and authoritarian in practice, becomes her guardian. Laila enters university, where her friends and her cousin Asad commit themselves against the government; she takes sides with no cause, and falls in love with Ameer, a poor relative whom her family would not accept.
Context
The novel appeared in London in 1961 from Chatto and Windus, eight years after Phoenix Fled, from the same publisher; Virago reissued it in its modern classics, then in 2021 with an introduction by Kamila Shamsie. Its title comes from a line in T. S. Eliot's Hollow Men. Some critics hold it to be in part autobiographical, and it has been studied for its portrayal of women, tradition and modernity, notably by Ruvani Ranasinha and Fawzia Afzal-Khan.
Who it is for
In English; a few points of reference on India in the thirties and on the partition of India help the reader to follow it.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as a classic of Muslim life by the Partition Archives of 1947, and selected in 2022 for the Big Jubilee Read list.
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