Sunlight on a Broken Column

[1] The novel, mainly set in Lucknow, is an autobiographical account by a fictional character called Laila, who is a 15-year-old orphaned daughter of a rich Muslim family of Taluqdars.

[2] The title comes from a line in the second stanza of T.S Eliot's (1925) poem The Hollow Men: Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death's dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column Laila, a young girl who has lost both her parents, lives in the household of her grandfather, along with her father’s sisters Abida and Majida and, Majida's 17-year-old daughter Zahra.

However, death of her grandfather makes Uncle Hamid, her father’s elder brother, head of the family and her new guardian.

Her rebellion against the hypocrisy visible in the so-called liberal views of her Uncle and his wife remains limited to her mind until she falls in love with Ameer.

The novel ends with her loneliness after Ameer's death after the bloody partition and so-called independence of both the nations, India and Pakistan.