One of Pakistan’s most celebrated English-language novelists, Bapsi Sidhwa, passed away in Houston, Texas, on December 25 at the age of 86.
Born in 1938 in Karachi to a Gujarati Parsi family, Sidhwa spent her childhood in Lahore, where the impact of the 1947 Partition deeply shaped her writing. She completed her BA at Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore in 1957 before immigrating to the United States in 1983.
Sidhwa earned recognition as one of Pakistan’s finest novelists, with works like The Crow Eaters, An American Brat, The Pakistani Bride, and City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore. Her most acclaimed novel, Ice-Candy Man (1988), later published as Cracking India in the U.S., delves into the trauma of the Partition. The novel was adapted into the 1998 film Earth by director Deepa Mehta.
Her novel Water: A Novel also became the basis for Mehta’s 2005 film Water. In addition to her writing, Sidhwa held teaching positions at esteemed institutions, including Columbia University and the University of Houston.
Throughout her illustrious career, Sidhwa received numerous awards, including the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the Mondello Prize for Foreign Authors, and the Sir Syed Day Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature. In 1991, she was honored with Pakistan’s highest national art award, the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, and was inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame.
