brew_and_books 's review for:

The Women's Courtyard by Khadija Mastoor

4.0

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I personally love a book that is critical of everything, congested with a claustrophobic environment and this is precisely the point here. Set in the ‘40s in the pre-independence phase with partition impending as the dark gloomy shadow, this book is not about the political leaders and fighters but about people who were being renounced long before the fight for freedom started. It is the story of the lives of the women, their children, and households that were spurned and silently sacrificed, confined in the 4 walls of their homes, demoted from an opulent lifestyle to a bare survival nick. There are multiple nuances and gradations of South Asian cultures, conformity, and tradition which lures the female protagonist, Aliya determined to stand out. Aliya finds herself securely sealed within the suffocating confines of her home and evokes a sense of measured judgement and individual independence which in no way sabotages the classical duties expected of a South-Asian girl to her family.
This book is a fine feminist literary classic with the courtyard as the central environment, with regard to the bygone era where the courtyard was a place where women used to gather together. I was traumatized till the very last paragraph and with my expectations of the story’s ending but the way in which the author swept me off my feet towards the climax was imposing. The book is radically ahead of its time that delineates the tart tussle and battle women fight, far from the battlefield.