A History of Burning: The perfect summer read for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko Paperback – 23 June 2023

Enjoyed reading the family saga of four generations.Starting with the tortuous journey of an indentured labourer from Gujarat to build railway tracks in Africa. How families were fractured and dispersed through tumultuous events: Indian partition, expulsion from Uganda and finally race riots in Canada. How these families coped with extreme tragedy, destruction and rebuilt again & again with extreme resilience.

A wonderful.insight into.immigrant families

I bought this book with high hopes. The theme of Gujarati families emigrating to Tanzania, Kenya, Zambia and Uganda and then kicked out from there to UK and Canada is dear to me. I had Gujarati friends in college who had come back to India from Africa and their material progress while retaining their language and culture almost in toto were impressive.The author of A history of burning is from this community. She has portrayed the lives of 4 generations of a Gujarati family. The book has won some prize but to me it looked like work in progress or perhaps the first draft on which plenty of work was necessary.There are too many characters here and none are etched properly. The only riveting part was about the treatment Indians started receiving from Africans once the rift between the two communities started.The author acknowledges her debt to many guides and mentors, quite a few of them being from the faculty of a journalism/ creative writing course. The quality of writing is then surprisingly poor. It looks like a project with an eye on marketing.Years ago, I had read a non-fiction account of the tribulations of 3 generations of a Gujarati family which had spread over all 5 continents. The author had come out, at least a decade and half ago, as a lesbian. It was a very good piece of writing, very sincere and honest. I have forgotten the title of the book and the name of the author. I bought its copy for the library of the college where I taught. I kept remembering that book while reading this one.