Description

A darkly funny, sharply observed, and deeply moving novel about the surprises and struggles of life in contemporary Delhi
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‘A beautiful novel exploring tensions in modern India’ OBSERVER
‘Confirms Anjum Hasan as one of the most important writers of our time’ WILLIAM DALRYMPLE

Alif is a middle-aged, mild-mannered history teacher, living in contemporary Delhi, at a time in India’s history when Muslims are seen either as hapless victims or live threats. Though his life’s passion is the history he teaches, it’s the present that presses down on him: his wife is set on a bigger house and a better car while trying to ace her MBA exams; his teenage son wants to quit school to get rich; his supercilious colleagues are suspicious of a Muslim teaching India’s history; and his old friend Ganesh has just reconnected with a childhood sweetheart with whom Alif was always rather enamored himself.

And then the unthinkable happens. While Alif is leading a school field trip, a student goads him, and in a fit of anger, Alif twists his ear. His job suddenly on the line, Alif finds his life rapidly descending into chaos. Meanwhile, his home city, too, darkens under the spreading shadow of violence.

In this darkly funny, sharply observed, and shockingly moving novel, Anjum Hasan deftly and delicately explores the life of Muslims in India and the force and consequence of remembering your people’s history in an increasingly indifferent milieu.

‘Hasan’s eye is sharp and her aim is unerring. This is a work of sublime elegance’ SHRUTI SWAMY, author of The Archer

‘Told in a subdued, sad, ironical tenor, it is compassionate without being sentimental’ GEETANJALI SHREE, author of the International Booker Prize-winning Tomb of Sand

‘Extremely timely … History’s Angel helps us view the erasures of the past through a living lens with sensitivity and nuance’ DAISY ROCKWELL

Publisher Review

A wonderful Delhi novel for our times, a Shahr-e-Ashob of the new India. History's Angel is eloquent, brave, elegaic and ultimately, heartbreaking. This remarkable novel reminded me of both of Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi and Anita Desai's In Custody, and confirms Anjum Hasan as one of our finest and most important writers -- WILLIAM DALRYMPLE This absorbing novel trespasses, from sentence to sentence, the boundaries that usually demarcate the grandeur of the historical from the tedium, humour, and disappointments of ordinary human life. Domesticity, everyday routine, and our historical pasts and futures are conjoined here tantalisingly, with impressive skill, and with real tenderness -- AMIT CHAUDHURI A shimmering, intelligent rage roils under a cool surface in History's Angel, which manages at once to be "made so insistantly, so noisily, of now" and inhabit layers of history. Hasan's eye is sharp and her aim is unerring. This is a work of sublime elegance -- SHRUTI SWAMY A seething seismic tale about the disturbing times the Muslims of India are living through, in ever growing dread of worse to come. Told in a subdued, sad, ironical tenor, it is compassionate without being sentimental. The novel asserts humanity and hope in the face of widening fissures through its main protagonist who, drawing sustenance from a deep historical perspective, refuses to play the victim and negotiates the situation empathetically -- GEETANJALI SHREE, author of the International Booker Prize-winning Tomb of Sand Extremely timely ... History's Angel helps us view the erasures of the past through a living lens. With sensitivity and nuance, Anjum Hasan draws us into the world of Alif, a Muslim history teacher in contemporary Delhi -- DAISY ROCKWELL Hasan's prose is introspective, carefully observed, and imbued with more than what is said ... [Her] gaze is clear-sighted and unflinching * Indian Express * Remarkable and insightful ... Engrossing ... Elegant. * National Herald * Genius ... one of the finest Indian writers alive * Firstpost * Craftily written ... The elegant, pondered and deep-reaching prose of this collection allows subversive humour to surface effortlessly ... The 230 pages are filled with underlineable gems . . . Hasan explores many of the relevant experiences of life in present-day * The Hindu *