Bonomali Goswami, Circles of Hell: A Novel (1991)

“It was a night of beauty and a night of terror. The deep blue sky was thickly constellated and after a long, sweltering day a balmy breeze was now blowing down the green soggy land. The sharp, stiff leaves on the bamboo thickets were aquiver with delight and yet the scented air seemed to be charged with a nameless fear.” — Bonomali Goswami, Circles of Hell: A Novel, 1991

“Searing and graphically described, Circles of Hell is a tale of innocent and hapless refugees who paid the price of India’s freedom. Stripped of their lands, their homes, their children, their past and future, they trekked the hunger-racked, fear-filled miles to freedom to find that they had escaped the tiger’s paw only to land on the crocodile’s mouth. Rabidas, an affluent farmer in Noakhali district of East Pakistan leaves behind his green fields and cow sheds and crosses over to India with his wife Komola, his younger son Manik and younger daughter Durga. In the process he loses Roma, his elder married daughter who is carried away by the blood-thirsty fanatics and finally sold to an aging Muslim landlord. Manik too is lost in the crowds. Roma escapes the Muslims but is kidnapped by Hindu gangsters in Hindustan and forced to prostitution, her only escape being suicide. Lolit, Rabidas’ eldest son, returns home from sea after ten years and then comes to India looking for his parents. Hindustan, their dreamland, offers no real safety. […]”    —Reader’s End