Here’s another book for the 1961 Club!
When this novel begins, Laila is a 15-year-old orphaned girl from a Muslim family that is part of the elite Taluqdars, equivalent to England’s landed gentry, in Lucknow during the 1930s. She has grown up in the house of her grandfather, a large household of aunts, cousins, and servants. In the beginning of the novel, though, her grandfather is dying, and it’s not difficult to guess that changes are in store.
The changes in this household are not the only ones coming, as evidenced by the arguments between Laila’s two teenage cousins. One of them sees his future as a government employee while the other wants independence from the British.
After her grandfather’s death, the head-of-household becomes her Uncle Hamid, who prefers a more English lifestyle than the traditional one her grandfather followed. Laila had been allowed an education with a governess in deference to her own father’s ideas, but this had ended before her grandfather’s death. Now her home is totally different, her aunts gone to be married or live elsewhere, the familiar servants replaced or sent to the country estate, the visitors most often Hamid’s political friends and acquaintances. Laila is allowed to go to university, but she knows her aunt dislikes her, and her home life is cold and isolated.
Uncle Hamid believes that the move toward democracy is a threat to the entire class of Taluqdars, so he is working politically to protect it. But some of his younger relatives feel that the dissolution of the system would be better for ordinary people. Laila tends to observe and have sympathies but no impulse to action.
This novel is a compelling record of a way of life that is completely gone less than 20 years after the beginning of the story—the family broken apart by the partition of India. It is interesting to see Laila move from the life in purdah to the more social existence required by her uncle’s lifestyle. The novel is very much also about how class distinctions affect people’s lives.
What? Me Read? 
What a great choice and it does sound an interesting read, thanks!