Starred review from July 1, 2024
An elegantly rendered debut memoir of a Muslim family living through widespread religious violence. As Chowdhary recounts, her extended middle-class family was essentially trapped in their apartment in the Muslim "ghetto" of Ahmadabad for many weeks following the horrendous train burning that killed Hindu passengers at Godhra on Feb. 27, 2002. The then-little-known chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, inflamed the violence by calling it an "Islamic terrorist attack," and, as the author writes, "the next day raging Hindu mobs, formed by thousands of people, poured into Gujarat's streets, in cities, villages, and towns, looting, raping, and burning alive the state's Muslim citizens. The massacre continued for three months." At the time, Chowdhary was 16, hoping soon to take her end-of-year exams. Instead, she was forced to navigate unimaginable terror outside her home, as well as the familial tension building inside their apartment, involving her mother, Amma, a soldier's daughter from Madras; Papa, a hard-drinking retired government clerk; and his critical mother, Dadi. The author describes how she was understandably protective of her mother, the dark-skinned outsider whom Papa and Dadi often blamed for their misfortunes. Chowdhary establishes the sense of foreboding immediately: "Our home believed in many things but not its daughters." The author sensed that the delicate balance among the neighbors of different religions living "cheek by jowl" in the city had been irreparably ruptured by the violence, in which Modi was blamed for being complicit. "It doesn't matter this evening that this land we all stand on is the land of Gandhi," she writes near the beginning of this memorable book. "Something has been eviscerated. Something has changed. A new land and a new people reborn in fire." A tight, suspenseful narrative that interweaves one girl's keen observations of family within India's problematic history.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from July 1, 2024
In February 2002, a horrific train fire in the Indian state of Gujarat killed 57 Hindu passengers. In the ensuing weeks, violence gripped the region, goaded by comments from Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who immediately blamed local Muslims for the fire. (Modi is now India's Prime Minister.) In this devastating memoir, Chowdhary recounts her family's experiences as Muslims during the attacks. Described at the time as riots by the government but subsequently classified by others more accurately as pogroms and state-supported terrorism, what happened in Gujarat, and especially Chowdhary's city of Ahmedabad, has been woefully overlooked in the West. By blending her story with a history of India's fraught ethnic tensions and a nearly journalistic documentation of the attacks, the author sheds new perspective on the events. Her poignant reflections on how discrimination impacted her father's career and life and how India's caste system helped breed the monstrous conduct of those who murdered and raped with impunity in 2002 make for a visceral and eye-opening reading experience. Intense is not a strong enough word for the impact of Chowdhary's words. T his is reading fire in your hands. Do not miss it.
COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from July 15, 2024
In this harrowing debut, Chowdhary recalls growing up Muslim in early 2000s Ahmedabad, India, as anti-Islamic violence gripped the country. She opens the account with the 2002 Gujarat train fire, during which 58 Hindu pilgrims died, and explains how India’s right-wing government leveraged the tragedy to blame Muslims and foment discrimination that had begun gathering steam after 9/11. Chowdhary was 16 years old and living with her parents and grandparents at the time. She catalogs the fallout, discussing the rape and murder of her Muslim neighbors by Indian nationalists and drawing disturbing parallels between India’s official response to the fire and the rise of Nazi Germany. She also zooms in on more intimate violence the women around her faced in patriarchal Muslim households, recalling her father’s alcoholic outbursts and describing how her peers came to believe that “there will come a day when the sun will be overthrown, the stars will fall, the universe will turn in on itself, and on that day, a god we’ve never seen... will finally bring every lost girl home.” Offsetting the heaviness of the subject matter with lyrical prose and moments of simple beauty (such as a birthday celebration filled with cakes and embraces), Chowdhary delivers an exceptional portrait of resilience in the face of unfathomable cruelty. This is difficult to forget. Agent: Anjali Singh, Anjali Singh Agency.