About The Book

“In the summer of 1947, when the creation of the state of Pakistan was formally announced, ten million people—Muslims and Hindus and Sikhs—were in flight. By the time the monsoon broke, almost a million of them were dead, and all of northern India was in arms, in terror, or in hiding. The only remaining oases of peace were a scatter of little villages lost in the remote reaches of the frontier. One of these villages was Mano Majra.”

It is a place, Khushwant Singh goes on to tell us at the beginning of this classic novel, where Sikhs and Muslims have lived together in peace for hundreds of years. Then one day, at the end of the summer, the “ghost train” arrives, a silent, incredible funeral train loaded with the bodies of thousands of refugees, bringing the village its first taste of the horrors of the civil war. Train to Pakistan is the story of this isolated village that is plunged into the abyss of religious hate. It is also the story of a Sikh boy and a Muslim girl whose love endured and transcends the ravages of war.

Praise

“A brew of brimstone, blood, and nitric acid served piping hot.” –American Scholar

“A powerful book.” –San Francisco Chronicle

“A powerful and affecting novel capturing both the sweep of the cataclysmic events of 1947 and the intimate details of village existence.” –John Gabree, Newsday

“Riveting, dream-like . . . With quiet but devastating force, Edelman plays the experience of being closed in–to trauma, to the past, to a ghetto–against the experience of being forever cast out.” –New York Times Book Review

“A powerful and moving novel that is both disturbing and exhilarating.” –Washington Independent Review of Books