Invisible Lines

Zebunnessa Rahim was born in East Pakistan, to a Bihari father and a Sylheti mother. She grows up in a sheltered world, sneaking behind her parents' backs to meet her half-Scottish lover, gazing enviously at her friends dancing at parties in their tight outfits, enjoying summers eating mangoes at her politician grandfather's villa. Until 1971, when her life collapses and she becomes at once a victim of both sides, the West Pakistani soldiers and the East Bengali freedom fighters. Homes turn into refugee camps. Lovers are separated by the different languages they speak. A father gives up in despair while his son fights for independence. When victory comes at last after nine long months of fighting, it brings with it a host of unanticipated problems - of adjustment, of acceptance and, for young Zeb, a new national identity. Powerful and evocative, this first novel explores the atrocities that went hand-in-hand with the Liberation War of Bangladesh, the rebellion that created a country even as it tore its families apart.