The Raj At War: A People's History of India's Second World War by Yasmin Khan, book review
"But what does India have to do with this? The Europeans have always been at each other's throats. What difference does it make to us? We're slaves still and always will be..." So the female protagonist of Ismat Chughtai's Urdu novel The Crooked Line responds to news of the invasion of Poland in 1939. Published in 1945, when memories of the war were still raw, the novel records the voices and feelings of the period's liberal intelligentsia.