Books: The voices of partition and the legacy of change in Merryn Glover's A House Called Askival
AT midnight tonight, Pakistan and India mark the 70th Anniversary of Independence and Partition, a bitter-sweet commemoration of events that continue to bring both strength and conflict to the region. Eye-witnesses from that time are passing away, but ten years ago I was privileged to interview several. The research was for my novel, A House Called Askival, a story stretching from the 1930s to the new millennium told through an American family whose lives are indelibly marked by some of the key religious clashes in India’s history, including the violence of Partition in 1947. Being brought up in Nepal, India and Pakistan, it was a story I had long wanted to tell, so in 2007 I went back to the hill-station of Mussoorie, where I’d attended school, and listened to a diverse spectrum of people recount what happened when the troubles of Partition spilled over into their quiet town.
