Her third novel, Cracking India was awarded the German Literaturepreis and a nomination for Notable Book of the Year from the American Library Association, and was mentioned as a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year," all in 1991. These include the Pakistan National honors of the Patras Bokhri award for The Bride in 1985 and the highest honor in the arts, the Sitari-I-Imtiaz in 1991. Since then, she has received numerous awards and honorary professorships for these first two works and her two most recent novels, Cracking India and An American Brat.
Though the experience was one she says, "I would not wish on anyone," it marks the beginning of her literary fame (Sidhwa "Interview" 295). During this time she was an active women's rights spokesperson, representing Pakistan in the Asian Women's Congress of 1975.Īfter receiving countless rejections for her first and second novels, The Bride and The Crow Eaters, she decided to publish The Crow Eaters in Pakistan privately. But now that I've been published, a whole world has opened up for me." (Graeber) For many years, though, she says, "I was told that Pakistan was too remote in time and place for Americans or the British to identify with"(Hower 299).
She says, "Whenever there was a bridge game, I'd sneak off and write. The responsibilities of a family led her to conceal her literary prowess. At nineteen, Sidhwa had married and soon after gave birth to the first of her three children. She then went on to receive a BA from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore. Growing up with polio, she was educated at home until age 15, reading extensively. Born on Augin Karachi, in what is now Pakistan, and migrating shortly thereafter to Lahore, Bapsi Sidhwa witnessed the bloody Partition of the Indian Subcontinent as a young child in 1947. She has produced four novels in English that reflect her personal experience of the Indian subcontinent's Partition, abuse against women, immigration to the US, and membership in the Parsi/Zoroastrian community. Bapsi Sidhwa is Pakistan's leading diasporic writer.
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