In the last three years there has been a spate of books on partition, a subject that still hurts the generation that went through the nightmare. Qurratulain Hyder's 'A Season of Betrayal' is the latest in the line of bloody partition tales. Translated by C M Naim, the book has three short stories, set between 1947 and 1948. Interestingly, her central characters are women. Abused women, abducted women, raped women and women separated from their roots.

This is not surprising. Hyder perhaps began the trend of feminist literature in India, which sought to rewrite the patriarchal worldview and challenged the set order. Her characters, though caught in a parochial society, have the strength to deal with it. Names like Krishna Sobti, Ismat Chughtai, Mahasweta Devi, Nabaneeta Dev Sen, Sugathakumari and Kamala Das were the other torchbearers. Though not self-consciously feminist, the Indian woman found her voice in their books.

Published in 1960, the stories talk about the sense of betrayal that most characters feel. Both personal and political betrayal. 'Sita Betrayed' is about a modern woman in post-partition India, who is separated from her husband and is living with her lover. It describes her life before partition, her marriage and the separation. Sita is struggling to get the custody of her only son in a desperate bid to keep in touch with her past.

In 'The Housing Society', she writes about three families who meet in pre-Partition Uttar Pradesh. In post-Partition Karachi the tables have turned. The two rich and influential families before partition are now destitute and homeless. The poor country cousin is a powerful business magnate, who has managed to twist the new political class to suit his convenience. The main character here is Suraiya, his daughter, who chooses to become an artist and live an independent life.

The third 'The Sound of Falling Leaves' is about 36-year-old Tanvir Fatima, who meets her old acquaintance in a Lahore bazaar. It brings back memories of her teenage years in Delhi: her awareness about her sexuality, her awkward ways of dealing with it and the middle class morality which restrains her from expressing it.

The book does not have the same beauty that marks Hyder's writing in Urdu. But that is expected because there several Urdu words and even nuances that simply cannot be translated. The language is contrite in some places, and the prose tends to ramble a little. But for bibliophiles desperate to read Hyder's path breaking books, it offers an insight into the way her mind worked.

This is Hyder's second book to be translated into English. 'River of Fire' was the first. Originally published as 'Aag ka darya' in 1959, it is without question the most important novel of 20th century. It spans two-and-a-half millennia and is divided into four sections, with each section dedicated to classical, medieval, colonial, and modern post-national era.

Characters that in every period bear the same name link each era: Gautam, Champa, Kamal, and Cyril. Gautam, appearing first as a student of mysticism at the Forest University of Shravasti in the 4th century BC, and Champa, who embodies the Indian woman in every era, begin and end the novel. Kamal, the Muslim character, appears mid-way through the novel as an 'outsider', part of the Mughals who invaded India, and loses himself in the Indian landscape. Cyril, the Englishman, appears last. The four characters share different relationships in different eras. Hyder is arguing for the Indian culture that is inclusive and all encompassing.

Often compared to her contemporaries and great writers Milan Kundera and Gabriel Garcia Marquez for the brilliance of her prose and her way of describing events, Hyder was awarded the Bharatiya Jnanpith, India's highest literary award in 1989.

In the era when her books first appeared, Hyder's work scandalised several of her contemporaries. It was an era when women were just beginning to think about their right to live their life on their own terms and were beginning to try and understand and deal with their sexuality. But her work also prompted many to think about rules that defined society then.

It was clear from Pinki Virani's first book Aruna's Story (about a nurse raped in a Mumbai hospital and left semi-comatose, while the man roams free) that she does not believe in telling pretty stories. She wants her reader to look at ugliness in the face, feel angry, depressed, suffocated. For contentment doesn't bring change, if at all, rage does.

Virani was brought up in Mumbai in happier times, when the rot had not set in so deeply. When she returned to the city of her birth after a few years in Bangalore, she was horrified at what was happening to Mumbai. From a culturally rich, cosmopolitan city, it had turned into a filthy, polluted, corrupt, communally tense, crime-ridden metropolis not fit for decent middle class people to live in. Gangsters and rapacious politicians now ruled a "cemetery" of a city.

Her rage and feeling of helpless anguish are discernible in the lengthy preface titled Who Killed Bombay? After reading it, anyone with an iota of awareness will know exactly who and what is being blamed for the 'murder' of Mumbai. This and the frankly autobiographical Mazagon, Bombay-10 are the best pieces in the book.

The story of her father, the crockery dealer, brave and pragmatic in the face of all provocation, needed a whole novel to itself. The 'Loud One' is a barely disguised self portrait (she is as harsh towards herself as she is towards others), of a woman who helps her long-suffering father keep the family of four sisters and one would-be son-in-law together, as things change rapidly for the worse around the one-placid area; the disintegration of this central island is a representation of the city's core giving way, implying advancing doom. Bullying and extortion by hooligans belonging to a communal party, religious fanaticism rising to the fore; one of her father's Hindu customers refusing to pay after Muslims have been 'taught a lesson' after the riots, and the paying up when reprisal is swift in the form of bomb blasts.

Her sister's fiancé leaves for better prospects abroad, the neighbours don't care a damn as their balcony tilts dangerously putting the entire building at risk, a pandit cannot be found easily to marry her and her Hindu boyfriend. Interspersed with the family's joys and woes and deftly painted portraits of the city, its people and its past; how places got their names and how the various gangsters called Salim are differentiated by funny nicknames and other such charming trivia.

Frankly, everything Virani wants to convey is all there in this story and Crime and Punishment (about the daylight murder of a builder) and because these are so brilliant, the others come across as weak in comparison. One also disagrees with a few things like the very colourful portrait of know-all gangster Pakya in Salvage Savage - the very sort Virani disapproves of but describes with such sympathy and perhaps unintended affection. She gets the lingo down accurately and the descriptions are bang-on, but Pakya certainly one the guys who killed Bombay cannot be let off the hook because he is also, in a way victim of a rotten system. Pakya is too Bhiku Mhatre of "Satya", a film that comes up several times in the book, almost as an underlying motif.

Pinki is also strangely respectful towards dreaded don Karim Lala (The Lala In Winter) because he conducted his business with honour! Crime is crime, however 'ethical' it may be. And the glamorous gangsters of yore did give rise to the ruthless hitman, extortionist and political maverick of the present. Pinki also makes Chhagan Bhujbal out to be a kind of misunderstood intellectual caught in the wrong ideology at the wrong time-odd that one so cynical and tough so easily duped!

C'mon Barbie and Let's Go Party are sharp but lightweight pieces before the sprawling Modern Morality Tale, one of the heroes of which is Veeru Devgan of all people! His son Ajay Devgan and Shah Rukh Khan are supposed to be the visionaries who will make a difference to films in the future! Well, one can just wait and see. Virani is inexplicably sympathetic towards the film industry - one hero is terrorised by a powerful politician's daughter-in-law and another by a corrupt income tax official! Anyone who has observed the not-so-above-board workings of show business would find Virani's compassion overdone, if not entirely misplaced. In one of the anecdote in this chapter, you detect a certain unwelcome prurience in the description of a politician's sex life (not named, but anyone can guess who he pervert is!).

Virani's dedication to "the journalists of Bombay who fight to preserve the sanity of this city, and without whom it would have long since succumbed" is also highly debatable! But despite differences with the content of this book, it cannot be denied, that Virani does her research thoroughly, writes strong, honest, slap-on-the-knuckle prose-no sugar coating of the bitter pill, you got to swallow it or gag in the attempt.