Book review - Lion of the Sky

 

Title: Lion of the Sky

Author: Ritu Hemnani

Genre: historical fiction/verse novel

Similar books: One Big Open Sky by Lesa Cline-Ransome

                      The Partition Project by Saadia Faruqi

Rating:

 

a nice, complex picture

Summary (provided by publisher): Twelve-year-old Raj is happiest flying kites with his best friend, Iqbal. As their kites soar, Raj feels free, like his beloved India soon will be, and he can’t wait to celebrate their independence.
But when a British lawyer draws a line across a map, splitting India in two, Raj is thrust into a fractured world. With Partition declared, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim families are torn apart—and Raj’s Hindu and Iqbal’s Muslim families are among them.
Forced to flee and become refugees, Raj’s family is left to start over in a new country. After suffering devastating losses, Raj must summon the courage to survive the brutal upheaval of both his country and his heart.

My opinion: Partition is, admittedly, an incredibly complex topic. It could be too much to address in a traditional novel, much less in a verse novel like this one. But Hemnani makes it work, partly by not trying to explain everything. We don't get a full picture of the politics of the region, the history of British occupation. We only get a snapshot of life in the region under British rule and the rapid shift after Partition is declared. The narrative covers a reasonable time span, less than a year, and shows us very different pictures of life in that time. More importantly, it's about more than just the affects of Partition. It is just as much about Raj's relationship with his father, the expectations he feels like he cannot meet.

Advanced Reader Copy provided by NetGalley