Synopsis
The Weary Generations, a bestseller in the Indian subcontinent since publication in the 1960s, appears here in English for the first time, translated by the author from the original Urdu. This classic novel was the first to depict in fiction the struggle of the people of India against the British Raj.
Naim, the son of a peasant farmer, loses an arm fighting for the British during the First World War and is decorated for his bravery. But his faith in the Raj has been shattered and on his return to his village in northern India he joins the newly formed Congress Party and later the Muslim League, eventually being incarcerated for his political activities. He marries Azra, daughter of a wealthy landowner, but the marriage of this couple from very different social backgrounds proves impossible to sustain, thus mirroring the union between the British Empire and its Indian subjects. Finally, Naim's hopes for a united India are swept away after Independence in 1947 when his Muslim family is forced to migrate to newly created Pakistan.
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Reviews
The Weary Generations ($36.95; Sept. 3; 334 pp.; 0-7206-1062-1). This prizewinning 1963 novel, originally written in Urdu by its Indian-born author, is a leisurely, vividly dramatic chronicle of the first half-century of Indias modern history. The appealing protagonist Naim is a peasant's son who grows up dazzled by the glamour and sophistication of the British Raj, fights for Great Britain in WWI (and loses an arm), is swept up after the war into pro-Muslim (and anti-British) political activity and subsequently imprisoned, and wins, then loses the love of the beautiful high-born girl he hopefully marries. In a devastating stroke of climactic irony, when Independence arrives in 1947, Naim finds himself again ``imprisoned'' by his caste and his loyalties: a man without a country whose fate is, paradoxically, a mirror image of India's own. Altogether, a brilliant work: one of the great fictional portrayals of the Raj and a sobering, very moving human document. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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