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In August 1947, British colonizers split the Indian subcontinent into the Muslim-majority nation of Pakistan and the Hindu-majority nation of India, leading to the largest migration in human history. As a result, millions of people experienced violence and loss, death, sexual assault, an uprooting of ancestral homes — but many of those stories were lost over the years.
In her debut novel,
The Parted Earth, journalist and activist Anjali Enjeti follows her characters over seven decades as they piece together their family history against the backdrop of Partition.
"When we talk about the fact that 15 million migrated and we think about the number of descendants from that, we're talking about millions and millions of people," Enjeti says of Partition's impact.