The Women's Courtyard
A feminist classic of Partition literature in a newly revised translation by Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell.
A Penguin Classic
Set in the turbulent decade of the 1940s, The Women's Courtyard provides an inverted perspective on the Partition. Mastur’s novel is conspicuously empty of the political pondering and large national questions that played out, typically, in the arenas of men. Instead, it gives expression to the preoccupations of the women in the courtyard, fighting different battles with loud voices. The novel follows a Muslim girl, Aliya, and her family, about and around the climax of the Independence struggle. While the national struggle rages on the street, Aliya and the other women in the courtyard are tethered hopelessly to their own problems of life…