Book Review: Midnight’s Furies (Author Nisid Hajari)

Midnight’s Furies deals with the complicated issue of India’s partition. The book explores the reasons of partition and roles of leaders like Nehru, Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Jinnah, and Lord Mountbatten etc. in partition related issues. The book starts with riots in Bengal and moves ahead to riots in Bihar and then with the brutal and furious riot stories of Punjab. While covering partition related riot incidents the book also covers important issues amalgamation of major independent dominions like Kashmir, Junagrh, Hyderabad with India.

The book banks upon narratives of eye-witnesses, personal notes of government officials and political leaders, published reports of 1940s to dive deeper into the issues of partition. Nisid Hajari concludes the book in an epilogue that narrates how partition has created a deadly legacy between the two countries which is dangerous for both the countries as well as for the entire world.

Midnight’s Furies is an easy read owing to simple narrative used by Hajari. Some parts of narratives makes you realise the extent of atrocities of riots while some other parts appear to be dwelling with unwarranted details that doesn’t add much to the overall context, some of them appear to be repetitive.

A reasonably good book if you want to understand the reasons of partition and the riots that shook South Asia during India’s independence. However, the book assumes that the legacy of animosity between India and Pakistan started only because of the partition and avoids any detailing of religious differences in pre-Jinnah India, which the reader needs to keep in mind. 

Book Review: Butal - This book can keep you glued to it till the end

Brutal starts with a fierce prologue based on an incident in Bandhavgarh National Park where Kunal Chaubey, a young man runs to rescue himself from some unknown monsters. Despite his tiring body he manages to resist, in fact, more than that, he manages to fight back and later realizes that he has managed to kill those monsters.

The main story of the book starts 8 years later when a journalist, Prakash takes up Nitin Tomar case, Nitin appears to be a brutal school teacher who has massacred 11 innocent school children in an act which is perceived as a crime against humanity. Prakash thinks this case to be an open and shut case, thus, to be a perfect case to get back into action with ease after a forced break due to an unfortunate accident in some other case.  However, Nitin Tomar gets killed prior to his appearance before the court and then subsequently the killer of Nitin Tomar. As the story progresses the seemingly open and shut case appears to be one of the most complicated case for Prakash and his colleague Sima and Mrinal with numerous complex knots waiting to be disentangled.  

Author of the book, Uday Satpathy manages to maintain flow and thrill of the story till the end. He also manages to integrate the core theme of the story with some similar recent incidents across the globe to make the plot more realistic and gripping.

Go for it you are looking for suspense, thrill and a fresh story line.