I mean, maybe it was supposed to be a reflection of how traumatizing the journey was for her and this was how it was being displayed, but still, it seemed like Hiranandani pushed a little too far and it didn’t end up quite lining up with the characterization established in the first half of the book. To me, this did not match her characterization up until that point, and it seemed completely out of the blue and over-the-top. At one point towards the end, Nisha gets in trouble for talking to someone, and suddenly she turns into an angsty, self-deprecating girl who vows to never speak again.

I probably would have rated this book a little higher if it wasn’t for the clunky characterization of Nisha at the end of the novel. I don’t think that’s the best marker for identifying religion (in fact, I think it’s really problematic), but I suppose it gets some of the point across to the child readers. Lots of emphasis is placed on “looks”-Nisha mentions quite a few times how people either “look” or “don’t look” Hindu, Sikh, or Muslim based on what they wear. It was interesting to me that we get a lot of information of Muslim living (told through Nisha’s eyes), but we actually get very little of the religion Nisha and her family practice, Hinduism, beyond mentions of various Hindu gods. The story is very clearly detailed and told well. Along the way, Nisha questions people’s beliefs and wonders how people who had always been friendly could turn against their neighbors because of this event (the division of the old India into Pakistan and India). Nisha writes to her deceased mother the events leading up to the family leaving, the Hindu/Muslim religious tension, and their journey as refugees. Nisha is the narrator of the story, and it’s told in a very similar fashion to a Dear America novel: journal entries.

The Night Diary is the story of a Hindu family who must leave their home in the newly formed Pakistan and travel across the border to India. during the Civil Rights Movement in the US. This was the era of Mahatma Gandhi, who later inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. Hindus and Sikhs fled the new Pakistan to India, while Muslims went from India to Pakistan. Rating: 3/5 In 1947, India, free from British control, divided into two separate countries: Pakistan and India. The Night Diary, by Veera Hiranandani, was published in 2018 by Penguin.

The night diary by veera hiranandani