Partition Voices

Critics Review

• Puri does profound and elegant work bringing forgotten narratives back to life. It’s hard to convey just how important this book is

  Sathnam Sanghera

• Probably the closest thing to a partition memorial … Heartfelt and beautifully judged

  Literary Review

• Kavita Puri’s book is the most humane account of partition I’ve read … Partition Voices is important because Puri does not flinch as she dissects the tumultuous event, never shying away from the trauma … We need a candid conversation about our past and this is an essential starting point

  Observer

• Opens a fascinating and necessary conversation about contemporary Britain and its people – where they have come from, what they have done, and who they may now want to be

  Times Literary Supplement

• An original and moving collection of testimonies from British Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus about the transformative era of India’s partition

  Guardian, 50 Best Books of the Summer

• Thanks to Ms. Puri and others, [that] silence is giving way to inquisitive—and assertive—voices. In Britain, at least, the partitioned have learned to speak frankly of the past—and to search for ways to reckon with it – Wall Street Journal

• With a masterful mix of history, biography and contemporary reportage, Puri crafts a fascinating account of the living memory of South Asia in modern Britain. This book brings together a rich and disparate chronicle of lives ripped apart and remade by the trauma of partition, and deftly traces how the diaspora of post-colonial India and Pakistan helped to reshape the UK. Perceptive, enriching, shocking and joyful, Puri’s is a powerful and courageous book for multicultural Britain

  Tristram Hunt

• Confronts the difficult truths at the heart of Britain’s shared – and often ignored – shared history with South Asia

  Stylist, Best non-fiction books of 2019

• One of my favourite books and an important one … Changed the way I see the world

  Jeremy Vine

• An intimate, moving and important book by a daughter of partition. Kavita Puri reveals untold stories of those who lived through one of the most violent political earthquakes of the twentieth century. These are stories we need to hear

  Kirsty Wark

• This collection reveals how families are still impacted generations down the line and is a crucial read for understanding South Asian history

  Cosmopolitan

• An amazing, deeply moving book

  Dan Snow

• The most extraordinary book. The prologue already had me in tears. This is history – often being told out loud for the very first time … The book of 2019 that opened my eyes more than anything else. Seminal work, beautifully told

  Emily Maitlis

• A powerful and timely work. Kavita Puri coaxes often unspeakable and unspoken memories from a time of unimaginable trauma. A must-read for those interested in the fault lines in today’s geopolitics

  Anita Anand

• Powerful, compelling and heartbreaking – these are stories of division and conflict rescued from the past that offer valuable lessons for the present

  Sarfraz Manzoor

• Partition Voices takes its place alongside other valuable books on partition such as Khushwant Singh’s Train to Pakistan and Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence

  Eastern Eye

• An evocative book that leaves you breathless with its human predicament and gives voice to stories long held prisoner to silence … Nobody has ever brought out the stories of South Asians now settled in the United Kingdom … Kudos to Kavita Puri for documenting Partition’s lasting legacy in Britain, an irony in itself. It is a unique book, one that lives with you long after the stories end

  Frontline Magazine

• Puri’s excellent book is a welcome antidote to British amnesia over its colonial legacy. Partition is not just an Indian story, it is a British one too

  All About History

• An important document of those turbulent times – raw and unbiased

  The Hindu

• This is an essential book, remarkable in its reach and power. It brings the difficulty of how we pass on stories across generations into a moving and beautiful focus. Partition Voices is a book of witness and testimony that should have the widest readership possible.

  Edmund de Waal