The Lucky Ones—an enthralling, debut memoir by Zara Chowdhary—chronicles the persistent, heart-wrenching, multigenerational violence against Muslim communities in India. The story begins when a 2002 train fire killed Hindu passengers in Godhra, inciting backlash against the Muslim population in the country, with the then up-and-coming politician Narendra Modi fanning the flames by calling the event an “act of terror.” This led Chowdhary and her family to go into hiding in her hometown, the city of Ahmedabad, for three gruesome months, as Hindu mobs pillaged, sexually assaulted, and burned Muslim communities in the region. Chowdhary uses her personal account and that of her family’s to unflinchingly document the bloody horrors that many Muslims in India suffered through—and are still enduring today.
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Correction, Nov. 13
The original version of this blurb misquoted Narendra Modi, who called the train fire an “act of terror,” not an “Islamic terrorist attack.”