A History of Burning
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Summary
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A SARAH JESSICA PARKER BOOK OF THE YEAR
Four generations. Three sisters. One impossible choice.
Tricked aboard a boat to East Africa, Pirbhai is only thirteen when he is forced by the British into labouring on the railway. Under sweltering heat, hungry and frightened, he commits a terrible act just to survive.
He will never tell a soul, even when he meets Sonal, a fierce, loving woman with whom he starts a family in Uganda, in hope of a better life. But their granddaughters come of age in a divided nation.
Finally forced to flee, the family scatters across the world. They take with them a steel pot, a handful of photos, and a secret – that one day, will help them find each other again.
A History of Burning is a gorgeous family portrait of love, survival, inheritance - and the eternal search for home.
One family's search for a better life, for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko
'A remarkable debut . . . haunting, symphonic' New York Times
'Vast and intricate, alight with love and contained fury . . . A book I want to press into readers' hands and discuss for hours' Megha Majumdar, author of A BURNING
Shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award
A SARAH JESSICA PARKER BOOK OF THE YEAR
Four generations. Three sisters. One impossible choice.
Tricked aboard a boat to East Africa, Pirbhai is only thirteen when he is forced by the British into labouring on the railway. Under sweltering heat, hungry and frightened, he commits a terrible act just to survive.
He will never tell a soul, even when he meets Sonal, a fierce, loving woman with whom he starts a family in Uganda, in hope of a better life. But their granddaughters come of age in a divided nation.
Finally forced to flee, the family scatters across the world. They take with them a steel pot, a handful of photos, and a secret – that one day, will help them find each other again.
A History of Burning is a gorgeous family portrait of love, survival, inheritance - and the eternal search for home.
One family's search for a better life, for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko
'A remarkable debut . . . haunting, symphonic' New York Times
'Vast and intricate, alight with love and contained fury . . . A book I want to press into readers' hands and discuss for hours' Megha Majumdar, author of A BURNING
Shortlisted for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award
Reviews
[A] highly accomplished debut novel... a multi-stranded, intergenerational, poly-vocal epic that charts the struggles of an Indian family over the course of almost a century
Economist