हमारा शहर उस बरस
“That year, in our city, Hindus abandoned their pacifism. We’ve run out of other cheeks to turn, they proclaimed. We’re helpless! they screamed. They climbed atop mosques and waved the flag of Devi from the prongs of tridents proclaiming, What was done to us will be visited on them! Wrong shall be answered with wrong!”
In an unnamed city in India, violence is erupting between Hindus and Muslims, each side viewing the other with suspicion, rage, and blame. As their identities sharpen, friends and colleagues turn against each other. Hospital beds fill up and classrooms empty out. Curfews are imposed. Residents flee en masse.
Authors : Geetanjali ShreeOriginal Publisher : Rajkamal PrakashanPublisher: Penguin Random House
Translators:
International Booker-winning duo Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell strike gold again with their new book Our City That Year. The translation is of an outstanding quality. Yet another writer-translator team that understands each other so well is good news for literature.
The novel is about three close friends. Sharad and Hanif are academics. Shruti, a writer, is married to Hanif. There is a ‘neutered mosque-temple’ and a bridge that divides this side from that side. There are ‘these’ people on this side of the bridge and ‘those’ people on the other, and there is the third category — the ‘us’ — neither this nor that, both this and that. There is Sharad’s father, Daddu, who joins this threesome to form the ‘liberal us’ in the story. (Contd)
One of the novels where the translation was simultaneously published in India, UK and the US. It is published by Penguin Random House in India, Harper in US and Tilted Axis in UK.