Home | Books By Year | Books from 1959
Aag Ka Darya
Buy Aag Ka Darya now from AmazonFirst, read the Wikipedia article. Then, scroll down to see what other TopShelfReviews readers thought about the book. And once you've experienced the book, tell everyone what you thought about it.
Wikipedia article
'Aag Ka Darya' (; 'River of Fire') is a landmark historical novel written by Qurratulain Hyder providing context to the traumatic partition of the Indian subcontinent into two nation-states. It has been described as "one of the Indian Subcontinents best known novels".
The novel timelines spanned more than two thousand years, starting from the time of Chandargupta Maurya in the fourth century BC to the post-Independence period in India and Pakistan. It was published in Urdu in 1959 and translated by the author into English in 1998 as 'River of Fire'. In 2019, it was reprinted by New Directions Publishing.
Background and plot summary
Set across "four Indian epochs (the classical, the medieval, the colonial, and the modern post-national)", Hyder traces the fates of four souls through time: Gautam, Champa, Kamal, and Cyril. "Gautam (appearing first as a student of mysticism at the Forest University of Shravasti in the fourth century B.C.E.) and Champa (throughout embodying the enigmatic experience of Indian women) begin and end the novel; Muslim Kamal appears mid-way through, as the Muslims did, and loses himself in the Indian landscape; and Cyril, the Englishman, appears later still." Their stories crisscross "over different eras, forming and reforming their relationships in romance and war, in possession and dispossession."
Major themes
Together the characters reflect the oneness of human nature amidst the nationalist and religious upheavals of Indian history, Hyder argues for a culture that is inclusive.
Shortly before Partition, Kamal wonders: The Indo-Muslim life-style is made up of the Persian-Turki-Mughal and regional Rajput Hindu cultures. So, what is this Indianness which the Muslim League has started questioning? Could there be an alternate India? Why?.
"For postcolonial scholars, Hyders history has long been a purposeful rebuke to the purist Hindutva and Islamist ideologue."
Style
Pankaj Mishra in 'The New York Review of Books' wrote: "('River of Fire') has a magisterial ambition and technical resourcefulness rarely seen before in Urdu fiction. (...) Hyder employs diverse genres letters, chronicles, parables, journals to present her melancholy vision of the corrosions of time."
Aamer Hussein described the style thus: "Lyrical and witty, occasionally idiosyncratic, it is always alluring and allusive: Flora Annie Steel and E. M. Forster encounter classical Urdu poets; Eliot and Virginia Woolf meet Faiz Ahmed Faiz".
Reception
Aamer Hussein in 'The Times Literary Supplement' wrote that 'River of Fire' is to Urdu fiction what 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' is to Hispanic literature. In 2009 'Wasafiri' magazine placed the novel on its list of 25 Most Influential Books published in the previous quarter-century.[https://www.wasafiri.org/article/twenty-five-most-influential-books/ "Twenty-Five Most Influential Books"], 'Wasafiri', 19 January 2009.
In a review for a 2019 reprint by New Directions Publishing, Aditi Sriram wrote in 'The New York Times' that the novel "is as relevant in 2019 as it was when she first wrote it in 1959."
Kamil Ahsan in 'The Nation' wrote:
See also
* Artistic depictions of the partition
References
Buy Aag Ka Darya now from Amazon
<-- Return to books from 1959