Curfewed night by Basharat Peer

Peer, now living and working in New York, was born in 1977 in a little village called Seer in Kashmir, between Pakistan and India. He describes a loving childhood, heavily influenced by his grandfather, a gifted high school teacher, and his civil servant father, and a much less comfortable adolescence, which coincided with renewed unrest in Kashmir.

The Kashmir conflict is about disputed ownership. India, Pakistan and China all claim parts of the territory. India and Pakistan have fought three wars, the latest in 1999. Kashmiri separatist groups would prefer independence.

Sent away for his own safety, he became a journalist, first in Delhi and then for quality publications in the US and UK. He returned in 2003 and here tells the story of his family’s experiences, as well as tales of friends and those he interviewed as a journalist.

Some of his stories are harrowing: a mother tells of a son forced to carry a bomb into a separatists’ hideout by Indian troops; a poet’s entire family is killed; politicians reportedly live in comfort in refurbished torture chambers. Many of his school friends went to Pakistan to train with separatists. His father was nearly killed in a roadside bombing and several friends and acquaintances were tortured and killed. The contrast between the earlier innocent and happier life and the later more desperate times is particularly poignant.

Peer obviously found it difficult to leave Kashmir to live in Delhi, where he suffered some discrimination, but has perhaps reduced the pain of leaving his family by writing this excellent book.