A feminist classic of Partition literature in a newly revised translation by Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell.
A Penguin Classic
Set in the turbulent decade of 1940s India, The Women's Courtyard illuminates a unique perspective on the Partition. The novel follows the struggles of a Muslim family from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Aliya, during the years that lead to Independence. Mastur’s novel is conspicuously empty of the politicking and large national questions that played out, typically, in the arenas of men. Instead, it gives expression to the preoccupations of the women, whose lives are mostly circumscribed by the secluded courtyard of their home. As they deal with the poverty that engulfs the family as a direct result of the men's all-consuming passion for the Independence Movement, the women in the courtyard are left to run the household on shrinking means, and Aliya attempts to gain an education against all odds. Set within the strict religious and social framework of a once-prominent family, The Women's Courtyard invites us into Aliya's suffocating world, where women are forced to contend with deteriorating conditions, as they try desperately to hold up the social structure that confines them.
"Together, Sahni’s and Mastur’s complementary portraits of Partition illustrate how, when political tensions are weaponized, ordinary lives are crushed by the machinery of power. Those who survive must contend with the devastation that remains, long after the noise abates." —Vikas Turakhia, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Khadija Mastur was an award-winning Pakistani short story writer and novelist who was highly regarded in Urdu literature. Her novel Aangan (The Women’s Courtyard) is widely considered a literary masterpiece in Urdu literature and has also been made into a television drama. Mastur was born in 1927 in Bareilly, India. She migrated to Lahore with her family after the independence of Pakistan in 1947 and settled there. Mastur wrote with conviction on patriarchy, classism, chauvinism, and misogyny. She saw them as “systemic poisons that destroy and kill women intellectually, emotionally and physically.” Daisy Rockwell (translator) is an artist, writer, and Hindi-Urdu translator. She has translated numerous classic literary works from Hindi and Urdu into English, including Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand was the winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. In 2020, she was the winner of the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Translation of a Literary Work for Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There. In 2023 she was awarded the Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award. Kamila Shamsie (foreword) is the author of eight novels, which have been translated into over thirty languages. Her novels include Home Fire (2018), which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Burnt Shadows, which won the Premio Boccaccio in Italy, and A God in Every Stone, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award. Four of her novels have also won awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. A vice president and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she was one of Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” in 2013. She grew up in Karachi, has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and now lives in London.
A feminist classic of Partition literature in a newly revised translation by Booker Prize-winning translator Daisy Rockwell.
A Penguin Classic
Set in the turbulent decade of 1940s India, The Women's Courtyard illuminates a unique perspective on the Partition. The novel follows the struggles of a Muslim family from the perspective of the youngest daughter, Aliya, during the years that lead to Independence. Mastur’s novel is conspicuously empty of the politicking and large national questions that played out, typically, in the arenas of men. Instead, it gives expression to the preoccupations of the women, whose lives are mostly circumscribed by the secluded courtyard of their home. As they deal with the poverty that engulfs the family as a direct result of the men's all-consuming passion for the Independence Movement, the women in the courtyard are left to run the household on shrinking means, and Aliya attempts to gain an education against all odds. Set within the strict religious and social framework of a once-prominent family, The Women's Courtyard invites us into Aliya's suffocating world, where women are forced to contend with deteriorating conditions, as they try desperately to hold up the social structure that confines them.
Praise
"Together, Sahni’s and Mastur’s complementary portraits of Partition illustrate how, when political tensions are weaponized, ordinary lives are crushed by the machinery of power. Those who survive must contend with the devastation that remains, long after the noise abates." —Vikas Turakhia, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Author
Khadija Mastur was an award-winning Pakistani short story writer and novelist who was highly regarded in Urdu literature. Her novel Aangan (The Women’s Courtyard) is widely considered a literary masterpiece in Urdu literature and has also been made into a television drama. Mastur was born in 1927 in Bareilly, India. She migrated to Lahore with her family after the independence of Pakistan in 1947 and settled there. Mastur wrote with conviction on patriarchy, classism, chauvinism, and misogyny. She saw them as “systemic poisons that destroy and kill women intellectually, emotionally and physically.” Daisy Rockwell (translator) is an artist, writer, and Hindi-Urdu translator. She has translated numerous classic literary works from Hindi and Urdu into English, including Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand was the winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. In 2020, she was the winner of the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Translation of a Literary Work for Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There. In 2023 she was awarded the Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award. Kamila Shamsie (foreword) is the author of eight novels, which have been translated into over thirty languages. Her novels include Home Fire (2018), which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Burnt Shadows, which won the Premio Boccaccio in Italy, and A God in Every Stone, which won the Anisfield-Wolf Award. Four of her novels have also won awards from the Pakistan Academy of Letters. A vice president and fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, she was one of Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” in 2013. She grew up in Karachi, has an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, and now lives in London.
