Mano Majra is a small village on the Sutlej, with a railway bridge and a station whose train timings organise the day. Sikh farmers and Muslim tenants have lived together for generations, largely untouched by the politics of Partition. Then, in the summer of 1947, a ghost train arrives from Pakistan carrying the bodies of murdered Sikhs and Hindus.
Khushwant Singh moves between a handful of characters: Juggut Singh, a hulking local thug in love with a Muslim weaver's daughter; Iqbal, an English-educated activist sent to rouse the peasants; and Hukum Chand, the district magistrate, a weary, compromised man who tries to manipulate events from his rest house. As refugees and armed groups arrive, the village is pushed toward retaliation.
Written with unsentimental directness and dark humour, the novel was one of the first major works of fiction about Partition violence. Its manuscript won the Grove Press India Fiction Prize, and it was filmed by Pamela Rooks in 1998. It is brief enough to read in a sitting but lingers long afterwards.
Book details
| Author | Khushwant Singh |
|---|---|
| First published | 1956 |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Historical fiction |
| Type | Fiction |
| Pages (approx.) | 181 |
| Setting | Mano Majra, a village on the India-Pakistan border in Punjab, summer 1947 |
| Awards | Grove Press India Fiction Prize 1954 |
Themes
- Partition
- Communal violence
- Love across religion
- Moral responsibility
- Village life
Who should read it
Anyone wanting a short, unflinching novel about how Partition reached ordinary villages.