Tomb of Sand

This is the story of a family in India, centering around an aging mother and grandmother. It is a well-observed account of family dynamics.

Ma is in search of her younger self, lost in the violent upheavals of the 1947 Partition of India and Pakistan. My reading group friends were divided over this book, mostly because of its substantial length, but I found it delightful and it has stayed with me. An often joyous, sometimes nightmarish, baggy novel full of whimsical flights of fancy with butterflies, blackbirds, crows, saris, and bangles.

You can wander around in this book and become… show more.

Set in India, the central story traces the transformation of 80-year-old Ma, who is depressed after the death of her husband. Suddenly she decides to travel to Pakistan, confronting past traumas connected to the Partition riots. She is accompanied by Rosie, a hijra who is her best and wisest friend. The book is not just about its protagonists, but full of divertissements that tackle the meaning of relationships, memory, and time. There are also talking crows and a sequence of “performance art” when writers of the Partition take the page-as-stage.