Hyderabad - Manreet Sodhi Someshwar

 Fiction

Verdict: Meh

I picked up this novel because the cover art is decadent. And I'm a sucker for good cover art.  I didn't notice that this was a part of a trilogy until I started reading it. I'm sure that matters to some degree. The trilogy covers partition in India/Pakistan, but I don't think the characters are connected except for the historical non fiction ones as the locations change in each book. 

This novel was a bit of a let down after the previous book I read. The setting is Hydrabad during the nizam's time. I have a special fondness for Hyderabad which is another reason I wanted to read this. The book does a very awkward dance between historical Partition events, the nizam's palace, and a few smaller characters who add to the spy intrigue of the time. In my opinion, they don't really fit togther seamlessly and I struggled between the abrupt scene changes. Hyderabad is such a rich canvas to paint on that I was disappointed that the author only focused on Hussain Sagar and Charminar as a landmark. Yes, they are major landmarks, but they're also low hanging fruit. I also had a hard time identifying with and supporting the main characters. There were many characters involved and none of them were well developed. They all seemed superficial. 

The segments with historical discussions were extremely dry and more instructional/informational than adding to any of the existing story. It's like mashing a text book and a story book together and doing neither well. And the author broke the third wall in a few places bringing the reader back to the story line. Why we had to wander off into a historical conversation isn't really understood well. 

I get it that the point of the trilogy is probably to give a perspective from different locations on the finer points of partition - in this novel specifically - the Nizam's fight in Hyderabad to retain autonomy. Yet even that plot line was never really resolved in a satisfactory way even though we know that obviously automnomy was not retained. After all of these observations, I'm not very inclined to hunt down the other two parts of the series. It's very rare that I get bored reading a novel - and I did find myself wishing it would end already. There are plenty of other good reads that accomplish the same task in a much smoother way.

Read it if you have a large appetite for partition history and don't mind a mild masala with it.

~Becky~