The English novel Azadi, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1977, was written by:
- A.Chaman Nahal
- B.Bapsi Sidhwa
- C.Anita Desai
- D.Amitav Ghosh
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is A, Chaman Nahal. Azadi follows a Hindu family of Sialkot forced to leave for India, and it brought its author the Sahitya Akademi Award in English in 1977. Option B is wrong because Bapsi Sidhwa wrote Ice-Candy-Man, published in America as Cracking India, which views Lahore in 1947 through the eyes of a Parsi child; she is a Pakistani writer and so outside the Sahitya Akademi. Option C is wrong because Anita Desai's Clear Light of Day is set in Old Delhi and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize rather than awarded this prize for a Partition novel. Option D is wrong because Amitav Ghosh's Partition-related novel is The Shadow Lines, which won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1989, a different book and a different year. Keeping the award years apart, 1977 and 1989, settles this pair.
Read the full article: Books on Partition and Independence: Author-wise List
Practice Questions
View allThe novel Train to Pakistan was written by:
- A.Khushwant Singh
- B.Bhisham Sahni
- C.Manohar Malgonkar
- D.Chaman Nahal
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Train to Pakistan, published in 1956, is set in the imaginary border village of Mano Majra and follows what a trainload of bodies does to a village where Sikhs and Muslims had lived together; it is the best known English novel of Partition.
Read the full explanation →The novel Tamas, on the communal violence of 1947, was written in which language?
- A.Urdu
- B.Punjabi
- C.Hindi
- D.Bengali
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Tamas, meaning darkness, is Bhisham Sahni's Hindi novel on the days of killing in a town of western Punjab, and it won him the Sahitya Akademi Award; a well known television serial was made from it.
Read the full explanation →Pinjar, the Punjabi novel later filmed under the same name, was written by:
- A.Amrita Pritam
- B.Krishna Sobti
- C.Ismat Chughtai
- D.Attia Hosain
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Pinjar, in English The Skeleton, tells the story of Puro, a woman abducted at the time of the division, and is the central Punjabi novel of Partition; Amrita Pritam's poem addressed to Waris Shah is the other work of hers always cited on this theme.
Read the full explanation →The book Freedom at Midnight was written by:
- A.Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre
- B.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
- C.Henry Vincent Hodson
- D.Narendra Singh Sarila
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The two journalists, one American and one French, wrote Freedom at Midnight as a narrative account of the last year of British rule, the division of the country and the killing of Gandhi, drawing on interviews with Mountbatten.
Read the full explanation →India Wins Freedom is the autobiographical account of:
- A.Jawaharlal Nehru
- B.Rajendra Prasad
- C.Maulana Abul Kalam Azad
- D.Vallabhbhai Patel
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Azad, who was president of the Congress through the Quit India years, gave his account of the negotiations leading to Partition in India Wins Freedom, written in Urdu and rendered into English with the help of Humayun Kabir; a portion of it was withheld from publication for thirty years.
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