Partitions by Kamleshwar (Penguin Modern Classics)

Kamleshwar’s Kitne Pakistan enjoys cult status as a novel that dared to ask crucial questions about the making and writing of history. With India’s partition in 1947 as its reference point, the novel presents a limitless canvas against which the most extraordinary trial in the history of mankind runs its course. Present in a court that transcends space and time are Mughal Emperors Babar and Aurangzeb, Spanish adventurer Hernando Cortez, Lord Mountbatten, Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Along with political leaders, religious zealots and scheming gods of mythology, they stand accused of creating countless fractured nations, leaving a never-ending trail of hatred and distrust. The arbiter for suffering humanity is an unnamed adeeb or littérateur who must sift through the testimony of casualties from the killing fields of injustice at home and abroad, ranging from Kurukshetra to Kargil, Hiroshima to Bosnia. As recorded history unravels to reveal the sinister realities that lie beneath, the scholar finds himself travelling back through the centuries over oceans of blood, so that he may carry forward for posterity the enduring lessons of love, compassion, peace and hope. Translated into English for the first time, this boldly provocative saga is a triumph of poetic imagination that relentlessly probes our underlying assumptions of history and truth, religion and nationalism.