Manreet Someshwar’s Lahore (2021), the first book in her Partition Trilogy, is a historical fiction novel that take the readers into the traumatic period of India’s partition and the subsequent independence.

The novel unfolds through two parallel narratives – the historic events that includes Nehru, Vallabhbhai Patel, Mountbatten – Edwina couple and their daughter Pammi in one track, and a story of Laur / Lahore which portrays Sepoy Malik, his undiminishing love with Kishan Singh’s daughter, his evergreen friendship with Beliram.

The fiction tries to show the blood dripping scenes of the partition and its aftermaths. It describes the bloody clash in one chapter and portrays the neatly dressed Mountbatten and Edwina in other chapters, which helped to show the contrast of interests of divide-and-rule policy of the west.

The reader could realize the effort of the author’s research to bring out this fiction. But we need to honest while writing about it. Author tries to balance the history and fiction, but it made me to think as if it was skewed more towards the non-fiction part. Coming from the non-fiction part, almost everyone has known already. So, half of the book is about something which we knew already (except a few)?

In other way, the non-fiction part took the fullest energy of the author, which reduced her attention on the fiction part.

The narration has many Urdu, Punjabi, Hindi words, which frequent shifts readers – unfamiliar with those languages – often and make their reading challenging initially. But author would have assumed that the reader will adjust, as they added nativity to the story. I did. But will I continue to do in the next book of this trilogy, I don’t know!

Overall, I’m neutral about this.

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