This epic, sweeping historical novel full of "wondrous complexity"
spans continents and a century, and reveals how one act of survival can
reverberate through generations (Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye,
Vitamin).
In 1898, Pirbhai, a teenage boy looking for work, is taken from his
village in India to labor for the British on the East African Railway.
Far from home, Pirbhai commits a brutal act in the name of survival that
will haunt him and his family for years to come.
So begins Janika Oza's masterful, richly told epic, where the embers of
this desperate act are fanned into flame over four generations, four
continents, throughout the twentieth century. Pirbhai's children are
born in Uganda during the waning days of British colonial rule, and as
the country moves toward independence, his granddaughters, three
sisters, come of age in a divided nation. Latika is an aspiring
journalist, who will put everything on the line for what she believes
in; Mayuri's ambitions will take her farther away from home than she
ever imagined; and fearless Kiya will have to carry the weight of her
family's silence and secrets.
In 1972, the entire family is forced to flee under Idi Amin's military
dictatorship. Pirbhai's grandchildren are now scattered across the
world, struggling to find their way back to each other. One day a letter
arrives with news that makes each generation question how far they are
willing to go, and who they are willing to defy, to secure their own
place in the world.
A History of Burning is an unforgettable tour de force, an intimate
family saga of complicity and resistance, about the stories we share,
the ones that remain unspoken, and the eternal search for home.
