When the first three volumes of the Stories about the Partition of India were published close to a quarter century ago, they were widely acknowledged as the most comprehensive collection of texts in English translation from the three countries of the subcontinent. Ever since, the anthology has remained an invaluable resource for historical and literary studies trying to understand the politics of religious identities, colonial predatoriness, linguistic chauvinism, or the partition of large states to resolve ethnic conflicts anywhere. This new edition enlarges the range of the anthology by adding a fourth volume which includes a large number of stories from Bengali and Sindhi that speak about the continuing sorrows of separatist and fundamentalist world-views.. The anthology is further enriched by including stories by many of the finest writers in Urdu, Punjabi or Hindi including stories by major women writers like Qurratulain Hyder, Khadija Mastur, Popati Hiranandani, Dalip Kaur Tiwana, Nisha Da Cunha, Rajee Seth, Farkhanda Lodhi and Syeda Farida Rahman.

In a review of the first edition of this collection, the New York Times said that Alok Bhalla’s anthology had done a ‘fine . . . job of evoking the terror, the bewilderment and the remorse that still shadow so many lives on the subcontinent.