About Book
Laila, orphaned daughter of a distinguished Muslim family, is brought up in her grandfather’s house by orthodox aunts who keep purdah. At fifteen she moves to the home of a ‘liberal’ but autocratic uncle in Lucknow.
Here, during the 1930s, as the struggle for Indian independence intensifies, Laila is surrounded by relatives and university friends caught up in politics. But Laila is unable to commit herself to any cause: her own fight for independence is a struggle against the claustrophobia of traditional life, from which she can only break away when she falls in love with a man whom her family has not chosen for her.
With its beautiful evocation of India, its political insight and unsentimental understanding of the human heart, Sunlight on a Broken Column, first published in 1961, is a classic of Muslim life.
About Author
Attia Hosain was born in Lucknow in 1913. She was educated at La Martiniere and Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, blending an English liberal education with that of a traditional Muslim household where she was taught Persian, Urdu and Arabic.
She was the first woman to graduate from amongst the feudal ‘Taluqdari’ families into which she was born. Influenced, in the 1930s, by the nationalist movement and the Progressive Writers’ Group in India, she became a journalist, broadcaster and writer of short stories.
In 1947 she went to England with her husband and two children. Presenting her own woman’s programme on the BBC Eastern service, amongst others, for many years, she also appeared on television and the West End stage. In addition she lectured on the confluence of Indian and Western culture and wrote Phoenix Fled (1953), a collection of short stories, and Sunlight on a Broken Column (1961), a novel.