Zarina Divided

Gr 4 Up–Zarina, an 11-year-old Muslim girl, is forced to move from India to the newly formed country of Pakistan during the Partition of India in 1947. Based in part on the life of the author’s grandmother, the story shows that Zarina lives a comfortable life in India with her parents and four brothers, in a large house with several servants. Her father is an official in the Muslim League, active in politics. When tensions arise between Hindus and Muslims at the end of British rule, the family is forced to flee their home and take a perilous journey by train and boat to the city of Karachi in Pakistan, where they eventually settle. Told in verse, Faruqi’s novel skillfully weaves history with personal narrative, creating a potent first-person view of the violence and chaos of the time from a young person’s perspective. The book is divided into short sections rather than chapters, and text occasionally stretches across the page to add emphasis. Zarina’s eventual happy time spent at a girls’ boarding school in the mountains of Pakistan takes up a lot of the narrative, but nonetheless focuses on how she and her classmates learn to live peacefully together despite their different backgrounds. Included are a glossary, author’s note, photographs, and a map of Zarina’s journey.