The Great Partition.

• Author: Henderson, Kyle
• Position: FURTHER READING - Book review

THE GREAT PARTITION

Yasmin Khan

(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 251 pages.

With only the eldest people of South Asia able to recall the subcontinent's traumatic decolonization and division over sixty years ago, historians of the region work in a critical and shrinking window of time. Though academics have gained greater freedom to discuss events, they are tragically missing out on the opportunity to record them.

Yasmin Khan's recent contribution, The Great Partition, takes advantage of this newfound latitude to discuss the division of India and Pakistan. It begins just before the end of the British Raj and moves through World War II. The war, Khan argues, provided the suitable conditions for a turbulent transition. At first, the book alternates between a political history and a history of the poor masses, but the final 150 pages read as one long, sweeping description of massive violence and forced migration among the lower and middle classes. Analytical interjections and colorful anecdotes help to diversify the text, but the misery of the times, as wonderfully described by The Great Partition, is inescapable.

The book recalls without...