Posted by Swarna Rajagopalan on July 8, 2009. Filed under Human Security, Reading, Writing & Speeches, South Asia.
Word-pictures in memoirs, fiction and ethnographies leave an imprint on the mind that is more lasting than the best didactic writing.
I recently read Basharat Peer’s Curfewed Night. This book is many things—childhood memoir, coming of age journal, eye-witness account of the Kashmir Valley’s most violent decades and finally, something that combines journalism, ethnography, history and literature to bring home to the reader the experience of life in a conflict zone. It is a personal book and it is a journalistic account.
I really liked this book and I learned a great deal from it. You will too.
Basharat Peer, Curfewed Night, Random House, Delhi, 2009.