Tamas
A poignant, politically charged, and timeless novel about the 1947 Partition in a newly revised trnslation by Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell
A Penguin Classic
Tamas, Bhisham Sahni’s 1973 novel, is a chronicle of the sectarian violence that ultimately led to the devastation of the Partition. It drew immediate and universal critical acclaim for its poignant and striking depiction of the anatomy of a bloody conflagration that comes to engulf an entire region. Tamas is a story about how simmering communal tensions snowball into full-fledged riots that grip villages across the subcontinent. In a city in undivided Punjab, Nathu, a tanner, is bribed to kill a pig. When the animal’s carcass is discovered on the steps of the local mosque the next…