Goodbye, Innocence?
Moni Mohsin’s debut novel “The End of Innocence,” set in Lahore in 1971 – the defining year that saw a brutal civil war culminating in the division of Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh – is the story of innocence caught in adult entanglements. It’s also about dangerous love – “the kind of love that “tears you away from your family” – and what it means to cross the acceptable into the forbidden in a feudal culture.
The conflict is observed through the eyes of the nine-year-old Laila, a privileged girl who is spending her winter vacation at her family estate in rural Pakistan. Rani, the granddaughter of the family maid, keeps her company. Rani, the yearning dreamer, pursues a love affair with a stranger and such are the consequences that it provokes a full-blown crisis and brings to fore the contradictions of a fundamentally feudal society.
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