The first true people's history of modern India, told through a seven year, 9,000 mile journey across its many contested borders.
Suchitra Vijayan was born and raised in Madras, India. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, GQ, The Boston Review, The Hindu, and Foreign Policy, and she has appeared on NBC news. A Barrister by training, she previously worked for the United Nations war crimes tribunals in Yugoslavia and Rwanda before co-founding the Resettlement Legal Aid Project in Cairo, which gives legal aid to Iraqi refugees. She is an award-winning photographer, the founder and executive director of the Polis Project, a hybrid research and journalism organization. She lives in New York.
An Electric Literature Favorite Nonfiction Book of
2021
A Booklist Best History Book of 2021
"Midnight's Borders is an important book, a journey of
self-discovery by an Indian who, like many, grew up unaware of the
complexities and sufferings at the edges of a nation whose glory
was celebrated every morning at school assembly. It is,
furthermore, a record of our times and a reminder, to those of us
spoiled by the comforts of our self-exiled lives in the West, about
those of our fellow beings who have become the debris of callous
geopolitical shifts, whose hopes for even a safe, painless tomorrow
are so precarious." - The Los Angeles Review of Books
"Midnight's Borders is a necessary and urgent call to
action. Vijayan has given us a book about borders, yes, but she has
also given us a story of those human beings who are struggling to
exist in systems that are working towards their erasure.
Meticulously documented and compassionately rendered, this
important work is an impassioned demand for overdue justice."
-Maaza Mengiste, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The
Shadow King
"Suchitra Vijayan's debut book, Midnight's Borders, is a
genre-bending book of nonfiction-made of stories, encounters,
vignettes, and photographs-about home, belonging, and
displacement." -Namrata Poddar, Electric Lit
"Midnight's Borders is fascinating, eloquent in its insights, and
unflinching in its depiction of the dark side of
nation-building." -Starred Review, Booklist
"The stories in the book have been documented with precision and
empathy and narrated with eloquence ... A good read for people
wanting to understand the lasting impact of the colonial
cartographic disasters and for those wanting to understand India
through its people."
-South Asia Books Review
"A candid and heartbreaking work of expose journalism... Vijayan is
adept at teasing out the fraught, complicated social, political,
and spiritual dynamics at play in each region. Dozens of powerful,
intimate stories of people affected traumatically by India's
expedient geopolitical borders."-Kirkus
"A much-needed conversation on thinking about freedom beyond the
idea of nation and its illusory lines."-Southern Review of
Books
"Midnight's Borders is timely, first-rate journalism made human; it
recounts the deep personal consequences of colonialism and forced
national identity."-Foreword Reviews, starred review
"Suchitra's account of her journeys across the undefinable and
ever-shifting borders between India and its neighbors is gripping,
frightening, faithful, and beautiful. In Afghanistan, Kashmir, and
India, from one dangerous conflict zone to another, she spoke with
people, ate with them, and listened to their stories. As a bedouin
who grew up listening to beautiful stories from beautiful
storytellers around a fire, I was transported by her storytelling.
This is a serious, often funny, and deeply revealing book."
-Mohamedou Ould Salahi, author of Guantanamo Diary
"Unique and ambitious, Vijayan's project gains urgency and
significance from our moment of resurgent nationalisms, when
borders are being aggressively reasserted, in India and across the
globe."-Gaiutra Bahadur, author of Coolie Woman
"An essential, beautifully written report from the hellish margins
of a modern mega-state struggling to be a nation, of people whose
lives continue to be shaped by violent political marches across
age-old homes and habitats. A memorable, humane 'museum of
forgotten stories' that we must all read and remember."-Mirza
Waheed, author of The Collaborator and The Book of Gold
Leaves
"An intervention like no other when it comes to thinking through
not just the history of India but for reflections on borders,
migration, the elusory nature of nations With sharp political
analyses, dense historical research, and lyrical, image-rich prose,
Vijayan's journalism displays an inspiring ethic, one that is
invested in the micro-histories of the 'small man,' the one
existing on the fringes of history and the one that most requires
urgent representation."-Bhakti Shringarpure, author of Cold
War Assemblages: Decolonization to
Digital
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