A Muslim feudal family in provincial Bihar Shareef faces devastating
grief and anguish during the Partition of India in 1947 and then again,
the partition of Bengal in 1971 when lines are drawn across their lands
and hearts. Originally published in Urdu as Do Gaz Zameen, Abdus
Samad's deeply emotional and political novel traces the journey of the
Hussain family from the 1920s to 1970s, as they travel through the Bihar
province, to Calcutta, Karachi, and Dhaka and take us along intensely
critical political events that shaped the formation of new lands and new
identities in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
Abdus Samad received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1990 for Do Gaz
Zameen. His prolific literary career in Urdu fiction has garnered for
him several other accolades and awards such as the Bharatiya Bhasha
Parishad, the Ghalib award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the
Urdu Academy in Bihar. Search for a New Land is the first translation
into English of this epic novel.