What the Body Remembers: A Novel

"This is a story about estrangement and division... This narrative about fathers estranged from daughters, mothers from sons, husbands from wives, becomes a metaphor for the turmoil and flux we call history, without always speaking of that history directly... This is a novel whose many themes and characters have been orchestrated, for the most part, with great confidence and without sacrificing complexity. It is an impressive debut."
—Amit Chaudhuri, National Post (Canada)

"This is a captivating jewel of a novel by a seasoned and sophisticated writer... Beyond being a compelling tale of individuals, What the Body Remembers offers a gimlet-eyed view of a pluralistic society's disintegration into factionalism and anarchy. Though the events of 1947 India are a half-world and half-century away, in light of the religious and ethnic turmoil raging on earth, they still have much to teach us."
—Washington Post


Out of the brutal drama of Partition comes a rich, eloquent, and stunningly accomplished literary debut...

It is 1937 in a small village in Punjab, India, the beginning of the tense and tumultuous decade that will culminate in the violent and still controversial Partition between India and Pakistan. Roop is a young girl whose mother has died in childbirth and whose father is deep in debt. And so she is elated when she learns that she is to become the second wife of a wealthy Sikh landowner, Sardarji, whose first wife, Satya, has failed to bear him any children. Roop initially believes that Satya, still very much in residence, will treat her as a friend or even a sister, but it quickly becomes apparent that their relationship will be far more complicated than that.

Roop's story pulls the reader immediately into her world, making it seem startlingly intimate. As the novel builds, What the Body Remembers becomes Satya's story too, as she is forced to adopt ever more desperate measures to maintain her place in society and in her husband's heart. And it is also Sardarji's story, as the India he knows and understands begins to change beneath his feet. The escalating tensions in his own family reflect those of the religious and political dynamics that will lead to the cleaving of India—and trap the Sikhs in the middle of a horror wrought by the wresting of land. In a dramatic, terrifying conclusion the tragedy and strength of Roop, Satya, and Sardarji's lives reflect the greater world in which they must survive.

Deeply imbued with the languages, customs, and layered history of colonial India, What the Body Remembers tells the story of the Partition for the first time from the Sikh women's point of view, reclaiming a strikingly intimate and vivid sense of the large and colorful canvas of India and Pakistan. Beautifully written and profoundly shocking, Shauna Singh Baldwin's debut novel is at once poetic, political, feminist, and sensual—a true triumph of language and storytelling.

"In What the Body Remembers, with her sharp focus on women in such turmoil, Baldwin offers us a moveing and engaging look at 20th-century India's most troubled years."
—New York Times Book Review