Description
Bapsi sidhwa 5 books set includes the bride, the crow eaters, water, ice-candy man, an american brat
The bride
Travelling alone from the isolated mountain village where he was born, tribesman Qasim stumbles across a lost, orphaned child. Unable to abandon her to an inevitable fate, he names here Zaitoon, and brings her up as his daughter in the glittering, bustling city of Lahore. Lovingly raised in the colourful chaos of that exotic city, Zaitoon is content in her new life. Yet, as the years pass, Qasim grows nostalgic about his life in the mountains. Impulsively, he promises Zaitoon in marriage to a man of his tribe, and in her romantic imagination the fifteen-year-old girl sees a region of tall, light-skinned men who roam the Himalayas like gods. As bride to one of Qasim s lawless primitive tribesmen, Zaitoon is condemned to a harsh existence in the barren hills of the Himalayas, a life of utter subjugation, where beating are common and humiliation constant. For a girl from the city it is hard to accept and, only when her very life is at stake, will Zaitoon find a means of escape from which there is no return.
The American Brat
As An American Brat opens in Pakistan, the extended family of sixteen-year-old Feroza Ginwalla, a lively and temperamental young girl, agonises over the decision to send Feroza to America for a three-month holiday. This act of apparent audacity arises from concern over Feroza s conservative attitudes, which stem from Pakistan s rising tide of fundamentalism. Feroza s chaperone in America, an uncle only six years her senior, is her guide, friend and the bane of her existence. Her relationships and adventures shape her alternately hilarious and terrifying perceptions of America. Feroza s family in Pakistan, meanwhile, is in delicious turmoil over the possibility that American ways will ruin her. Her play, Sock em With Honey, based on An American Brat, played in London and Leicester in 2003 to full houses. Praise for An American Brat Recalls Gone With The Wind... powerful and disturbing... The New York Times Sidhwa s writing is brisk and funny, her characters painted so vividly you can almost hear them bickering! The New York Times Book Review An American Brat is an exceptional novel... funny and memorable! Los Angeles Times
Ice-candy man
Made into the film Earth-1947 by Canadian director Deepa Mehta, Bapsi Sidhwa s Ice-Candy Man takes the readers back to the partition of the subcontinent in 1947 as narrated by Lenny, the polio-stricken daughter of an affluent Parsee family in Lahore. Lenny sees Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Parsees and Sikhs fight for their land and their lives and is an unwilling witness to the trauma that bears the crux of the Partition tale becoming, like many others, the victim of her religion. Bapsi Sidhwa, Pakistan s most gifted yet down-to-earth novelist, resurrects the story of Partition, which is also relevant today as a tool of history and a chilling reminder of the ethnic hatred that still stalks the subcontinent. Ice-Candy Man was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and a Quality Paperback Book Club selection. Praise for Ice-Candy Man Ice-Candy Man deserves to be ranked as amongst the most authentic and best on the partition of India. Khushwant Singh in The Tribune "Sidhwa s Rabelaisian language and humour are enormously refreshing."
Water
Set in 1938 India against the backdrop of Mahatma Gandhi s rise to power, Water follows the life of eight year old Chuyia, a child-bride who is abandoned at a widows ashram in Benares after her fifty year old husband dies. There, she is expected to spend the rest of her life in penitence. Unwilling to accept her fate, Chuyia becomes a catalyst for change in the lives of the widows. When her friend, the beautiful widow-prostitute Kalyani, falls in love with Narayan, a young, upper-class Gandhian idealist, the affair boldly defies Hindu tradition and threatens to undermine the delicate balance of power within the ashram. Sidhwa s sensitive storytelling makes this a novel rich with unforgettable characters. Water offers a riveting examination of the lives of widows in colonial India, but ultimately it is a haunting and lyrical story of love, faith and redemption.
About the Author
Born in Karachi and brought up in Lahore, Bapsi Sidhwa, a graduate of Kinnaird College for Women, now lives in Houston. Sidhwa held a Bunting Fellowship at Radcliffe, and received the prestigious Lila Wallace Reader s Digest Writers Award. She has taught at Columbia University, the University of Houston, Mount Holyoke College and Southampton University. She has been awarded the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan s highest national honour in the arts.
The Crow Eaters
Faredoon (Freddy) Junglewalla is either the jewel of the Parsee community or a murdering scoundrel. Freddy s mother-in-law, Jerbanoo, thinks he is planning to do away with her, but for Freddy, who has always been a pragmatist, murder would never do. Insurance fraud and arson, however, are well within Freddy s repertoire - in fact he thinks he has invented the idea, so advanced is it for India in 1901... As his skills grow he becomes a man of consequence among the Parsees, with people travelling thousands of miles to see him in Lahore, especially if they wish to escape tight spots they have got themselves into. In this wickedly comic novel, the celebrated author of Ice-Candy Man takes us into the heart of the Parsee community, portraying its varied customs and traits with contagious humour. Noted Canadian director Deepa Mehta plans to make The Crow Eaters into a film
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