Amina The Silent One

Amina: The Silent One brings vividly to life the grim realities facing women in India today, the grinding, filthy poverty, and debasement with which most Indian women must contend in their daily lives. This book will shock you and rip your eyes open. Through the magic of Fiction, it tells an awful truth in human terms that cannot be told in any other way.The degradation of women in India is nearly universal, and ranges from their second-class status in society, often excluding them from educational and professional opportunities, to their frequent physical and psychological brutalization, often involving assault, rape, and sexual slavery.The anglicized educated Indian and the western industrialized world is appalled at the horrific news reports—all too frequent—of women attacked in public places, beaten, degraded, raped, and murdered. The situation and treatment of women in India is simply incomprehensible to most modern educated people. The media carries the hair-raising news reports; we shake our heads in outrage, confused that such cruelty and debasement of women is commonplace in a country that has long had the benefit of western cultural influence, education, and governmental systems.Yet the awful reality women endure in India completely escapes us because we are unacquainted with the actual, tangible details of their lives and the world they inhabit.In her latest work, Indian national and accomplished novelist and poet, Fiza Pathan has gone a long way in removing the obstacles to a true understanding of the hellish reality most Indian women experience. Her characters are fully imagined and alive to the reader, and she does not stint in telling the gruesome, shocking truth. She is candid and unsparing; she does not use euphemisms or false niceties in telling the tragic story of a Mumbai India slum family that, against all odds, produces a female musical prodigy. This novel will get under your skin and stay with you for a long time. Pathan’s characters live and breathe; you are sure to remember them; the sordid details of their lives and their struggles and heartbreaks materialize before our very eyes. Amina: The Silent One goes a long way in opening our lives and hearts to the plight of women in India and may actually be an agent of positive change in Indian society.