The Lost Homestead cover art

The Lost Homestead

My Mother, Partition and the Punjab

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The Lost Homestead

By: Marina Wheeler
Narrated by: Marina Wheeler
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About this listen

 On 3 June 1947, as British India descended into chaos, its division into two states was announced. For months the violence and civil unrest escalated. With millions of others, Marina Wheeler's mother Dip Singh and her Sikh family were forced to flee their home in the Punjab, never to return. Through her mother's memories, accounts from her Indian family and her own research in both India and Pakistan, she explores how the peoples of these new nations struggled to recover and rebuild their lives.

As an Anglo-Indian with roots in what is now Pakistan, Marina attempts to untangle some of these threads to make sense of her own mother's experience, while weaving her family's story into the broader, still highly contested, history of the region.

This is a story of loss and new beginnings, personal and political freedom. It follows Dip when she marries Marina's English father and leaves India for good, to Berlin, then a divided city, and to Washington DC where the fight for civil rights embraced the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.

The Lost Homestead touches on global themes that strongly resonate today: political change, religious extremism, migration, minorities, nationhood, identity and belonging. But above all it is about coming to terms with the past, and about the stories we choose to tell about ourselves.

(P) 2019 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd©2019 Marina Wheeler 20th Century Activists Asia Entertainment & Celebrities India Modern Politics & Activism South Asia

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All stars
Most relevant
I really enjoyed learning about The Partition, the Punjab and life in India at the time and the heartache that still continues........
Marina’s descriptions bring the book to life and her mother sounded just delightful.

A home lost....

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A must for anyone who's interested in this difficult chapter of India's history, told from the perspective of its impact on one family. Brilliantly researched and beautifully narrated. It is you who should be Prime Minister, Marina.

Brilliant!

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I loved this book. It gave me an insight into what happened during the Partician years in India and Pakistan. So lovingly told, informative. It made me want to visit. So lovely to share this journey and get to know the people/family involved. Thank you Marina Wheeler for sharing. Heartfelt.

Nostalgic

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The central thread of the book was an enjoyable read. Sometimes the detail of characters and plot made the task a bit tiresome. However in the end the narration was at a sufficiently high level to ma intain my interest. So I enjoyed it,

Epic read

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Quite compelling but does go into the monotone troughs here and there, sometimes it felt like a boring history lesson. Very interesting though! I think this book was more therapeutic for Marina Wheeler than entertaining for a reader. She’s in the legal industry so I guess not everyone can make everything sound interesting. Lacks a bit of something. I think that she must feel quite proud of it and it became like a project and lost the flow here and there. Sometimes good, if you know you’re going to have 40 winks lol.

A good book, all in all.

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