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History's Angel

History’s Angel

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ISBN 9789354357206|Hardcover|280 pages|2023|Bloomsbury India
History's Angel is an important book, that dwells on the lived Muslim experience in India. It is a counter to disinformation and historical distortion, and a novelised record of our times.

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Anjum Hasan’s new novel History’s Angel dwells on the lived Muslim experience in India. It is about the life and anxieties of a Muslim schoolteacher in Delhi and his family — set in 2019 leading up to the citizenship bill protests. Its excellent cast of characters are drawn out with incisive clarity and wit. The city too is described perfectly with its neighbourhoods — old Delhi, Okhla, Jamia Nagar, Mehrauli, Noida — leaping out like minor characters as its protagonist wanders through them.

Alif is the quintessential Purani Dilli man who lives with his head in the clouds of the past. He teaches history and it is all he thinks about; it’s all he talks about; and it takes up half the novel. His wife Tahira, on the other hand is ambitious and acerbic. She works long hours at a supermarket while pursuing an MBA. She dislikes the assumption that because she is Muslim and a woman she must be a great cook. Her colleagues at the supermarket treat her, whenever Eid comes around, as a source of biryani and kababs, an expectation that raises her hackles sky high.’Is this all we are?” she asks Alif.’Bawarchis?’

The question blares on TV: “What does it mean, sir, to be a Muslim in contemporary India?” and Hasan shows her characters engaging with it, the idea of Muslimness, in the distressing contemporary climate.

In an interview on her publisher’s website, Hasan has said she “wanted to write a novel about what this might feel like on the inside…where joy in a new pair of shoes can override bad news politically, and where ambivalence is as strong a force as despair.” In this, she is successful. History’s Angel is an important book. It is a counter to disinformation and historical distortion, and a novelised record of our times.

Excerpted from this review in the Hindustan times, by Saudamini Jain.

Author:

Anjum Hasan
ISBN:

9789354357206
Binding:

Hardcover
Pages:

280
Year of Publication:

2023
Publisher:

Bloomsbury India
Edition:

First
Condition:

New
Country of Origin:

India

About the Contributors

Anjum Hasan is an Indian novelist, short story writer, poet, and editor. She graduated in philosophy from North-Eastern Hill University in Shillong, Meghalaya. She currently lives in Bangalore, Karnataka, India.

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