Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2010.
An account of the conflicts in Kashmir which still go on but are very seldom reported on. The author grew up in Kashmir and left as a teenager. He became a journalist and returned some years later to his homeland and now here is his account of a country still torn apart by conflict.
Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir Synopsis
Winner of the Crossword Prize for non-fiction, ' Curfewed Night' is a passionate and important book -- a brave and brilliant report from a conflict the world has chosen to ignore.' Salman Rushdie Basharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years countless young men, fuelled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to boarding school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir -- angrier, more violent, more hopeless -- was never far away. In 2003 Peer, now a young journalist, left his job and returned to his homeland. Drawing a harrowing portrait of Kashmir and her people -- a mother forced to watch her son hold an exploding bomb, politicians living in refurbished torture chambers, picturesque villages riddled with landmines -- this is above all, a story of what it really means to return home -- and the discovery that there may not be any redemption in it. Lyrical, spare, gut wrenching and intimate, 'Curfewed Night' is a powerful and intensely moving debut, combining the insight of a journalist with the prose of a poet. 'A passionate and important book -- a brave and brilliant report from a conflict the world has chosen to ignore.' Salman Rushdie
A passionate and important book -- a brave and brilliant report from a conflict the world has chosen to ignore.' Salman Rushdie
'One of the finest books I've read this year!Basharat Peer's memoir reminds us why peace in Kashmir is important, not just to India and Pakistan, but to the world.' Hari Kunzru, Guardian
'Curfewed Night is the finest book I have read on the contemporary Kashmir conflict -- literary, humane, clear-eyed and reliable. Basharat Peer has given voice, unforgettably, to a generation of Kashmiris who have never been heard, but who should be.'
Steve Coll
Author
About Basharat Peer
Basharat Peer was born in Kashmir in 1977. He studied political science at Aligarh Muslim University and journalism at Columbia University. He has worked as a reporter at Rediff and Tehelka and has written for various publications including the Guardian, Financial Times, New Statesman and Foreign Affairs where he was assistant editor. He is currently based in New York.
