The Parted Earth

by Anjali Enjeti

Overview

Spanning more than half a century and cities from New Delhi to Atlanta, Anjali Enjeti’s debut is a heartfelt and human portrait of the long shadow of the Partition of India on the lives of three generations of women.

The story begins in August 1947. Unrest plagues the streets of New Delhi leading up to the birth of the Muslim majority nation of Pakistan, and the Hindu majority nation of India. Sixteen-year-old Deepa navigates the changing politics of her home, finding solace in messages of intricate origami from her secret boyfriend Amir. Soon Amir flees with his family to Pakistan and a tragedy forces Deepa to leave the subcontinent forever.

The story also begins sixty years later and half a world away, in Atlanta. While grieving both a pregnancy loss and the implosion of her marriage, Deepa’s granddaughter Shan begins the search for her estranged grandmother, a prickly woman who had little interest in knowing her. As she pieces together her family history shattered by the Partition, Shan discovers how little she actually knows about the women in her family and what they endured.

For readers of Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, The Parted Earth follows Shan on her search for identity after loss uproots her life. Above all, it is a novel about families weathering the lasting violence of separation, and how it can often takes a lifetime to find unity and peace.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938235771
Publisher:	Hub City Press
Publication date:	05/04/2021
Series:	Cold Mountain Fund Series
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 8.70(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anjali Enjeti is a former attorney, journalist, and activist. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Washington Post, Al Jazeera, Paris Review, The Nation, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, and elsewhere. She has received awards from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the South Asian Journalists Association, and fellowships from the Hambidge Center and Sundress Academy of the Arts. Her essay collection about identity and activism is forthcoming from the University of Georgia Press. She teaches creative nonfiction in the MFA program at Reinhart Universityand lives outside of Atlanta, GA with her family.

Editorial Reviews

03/22/2021

Enjeti documents the impact of India’s Partition on successive generations in her immersive debut novel (after the essay collection Southbound). In 1947, British India is on the brink of being decolonized, with the lives of millions hanging in the balance. Hindu teenager Deepa Khanna’s doctor parents confront escalating hostilities from Hindu Indians because of their willingness to treat Muslims, while Deepa becomes secretly attracted to her Muslim friend Amir. After Deepa’s parents are killed in an attack, she moves to London and Amir leaves for Pakistan. The story then shifts to Deepa’s granddaughter Shan, who, following a miscarriage and subsequent divorce in 2016, begins digging into her past, finally uncovering the reason for her grandmother’s aloofness. Deepa’s experience renders her “unknowable” to Shan, filling Deepa with a grief that “seemed to burden generations of Khannas” with guilt. Meanwhile, other stories emerge of the Partition, from characters such as Shan’s neighbor, Chandani Singh, who supports Shan through her difficulties, and Chandani’s late husband, Harjeet, spinning an increasingly broad set of voices. While no less affecting, these supporting accounts receive an imbalanced, sometimes disproportionate attention that can detract from the novel’s main characters. Still, this intergenerational account of remembering and reconciliation sits comfortably alongside works of its kind. (May)

Publishers Weekly

"The Parted Earth is an epic novel of home and homeland, family and community, love and betrayal. In Anjali Enjeti’s deft hands, the story of a woman’s search for her grandfather, and for a connection to the ancestors, is brought to life. A fantastic debut." —Laila Lalami, author of The Other Americans

"Epic in scope, intimate in the telling, Anjali Enjeti's The Parted Earth is a devastating portrayal of Partition and the trauma it wreaked in the generations that followed. The gripping love story of Deepa and Amir cuts across decades, in journey through New Delhi, London, Atlanta and across the Indian diaspora. A magnificent debut." —Vanessa Hua, author of A River of Stars

From the Publisher

2021-03-03
Three generations of an Indian family deal with the aftermath of the 1947 Partition.

Enjeti's fiction debut, a carefully constructed riddle of a story told in clean, simple prose, begins in New Delhi in the hot summer of 1947, when supersmart 16-year-old Deepa gets her first taste of romance, finding origami notes from handsome Amir hidden in a plant in her family's garden. But the precarious political situation in India quickly turns toxic as the British government carries out its plan to divide the country into two parts—majority Hindu, majority Muslim, now India and Pakistan. With violence exploding around them and Amir's Muslim family set to leave town, the two plight their troth. The next section of the book, set mostly in 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia, centers on Deepa's granddaughter, a young American woman originally named Shanti—she's changed it to Shan—who is looking forward to partnership at her law firm and the birth of her first child. When her life is turned upside down, she connects with an Indian immigrant neighbor, and journeys of discovery begin for both women, with the help of a remembrance and reconciliation website similar to those projects that have been created to heal the wounds of the past in Africa, Australia, and elsewhere. Though an author's note says that only the historical aspects of this story are nonfictional, the fact that a character shares a name with one of Enjeti's grandmothers (as seen in the dedication) underlines the pulse of truth that makes this book feel so urgent and important.

Illuminating, absorbing, and resonant.

Kirkus Reviews