Reviewed By Toni Whitmont, Booktopia Buzz Editor
To read more reviews by Toni Whitmont,
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These are the words of author Irfan Master in his interview with
Booktopia which can be found
HERE. India was changing, the British
had gone, independence had come and the subcontinent was torn in two
with the birth of Pakistan and India.
I wanted to write this story because
it was a terrible time and those that lived through the worst of it
understandably are reluctant to revisit it. But, it did happen, and it
affected millions of ordinary people, the effects of which are still
felt today.
With a parent from both countries, Master draws on his own experiences
to bring this wonderful book together.
I was very curious about what this
cultural difference really meant when I was a teenager and found it
especially odd because they [Pakistan and India] used to be one
country. I researched the Indian partition and discovered it was a
brutal and painful time in their shared history. It was the sundering
of an ancient culture with a line drawn through a map which divided it
into two.
As I got older, I began to think
about writing something about partition specifically aimed at educating
younger people. I started asking younger people what they knew about
partition and discovered that some hadn't even heard of it. Those that
did had a very vague knowledge base. I also discovered that partition
wasn't talked about among the adult community. So when writing A Beautiful Lie I wanted to address
the Indian partition period in a story that would really connect with
people and that's what I set out to do, and in a slightly ambitious way
I tried to tie it all together.
(From an interview with the National Literacy Trust)
For decades, THE book on partition has been Salman Rushdie's superb
Midnight's Children.
As good as it is however, it is definitely not a book most teens would
get into.
A
Beautiful Lie is. Great stuff indeed - all with the added bonus
of no vampires, werewolves, angels, changelings, zombies, undead,
werecats, faeries etc.
