Partition Violence Revisited: Picture of a City in Turmoil
Ranjana Kaul
A GAME OF FIRE (AGG DI KHED) by By Nanak Singh. Translated from the original Punjabi by Navdeep Suri HarperCollins India, 2024, 344 pp., INR 499.00
August 2024, volume 48, No 8

A Game of Fire by the eminent Punjabi writer Nanak Singh is a sequel to his earlier novel Hymns of Blood both of which deal with the Partition, one of those seminal events in the history of the subcontinent which have left an indelible impression on the national psyche. Its impact on individuals and communities belonging to the two nations created, along borders which seemed arbitrary, continues to reverberate in works of Partition literature. The fact that writers ranging from Saadat Hasan Manto and Krishna Sobti to Khushwant Singh and Bapsi Sidhwa have felt compelled to interpret the chaos, insecurity and the brutal lived reality of a cataclysmic event which resulted in one of the largest known human migrations, testifies to its continued resonance in the identity of the subcontinent. History records facts but it is literature which goes beyond facts and looks at how those events impacted the lives and minds of the participants in those events,

Continue reading this review