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    Witness the Night
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    Witness the Night
    Unavailable
    Witness the Night
    Audiobook6 hours

    Witness the Night

    Written by Kishwar Desai

    Narrated by Vayu Naidu

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    In a small town in the heart of India, a young girl is found tied to a bed inside a townhouse where 13 people lie dead. The girl is alive, but only just. She is arrested for the murders she is believed to have committed. Now unconventional social worker Simran Singh must break through the girl's mute trance to discover the truth. Hauntingly real, and beautifully atmospheric, this is a major debut.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Audio
    Release dateJan 7, 2011
    ISBN9781407487298
    Unavailable
    Witness the Night
    Author

    Kishwar Desai

    Kishwar Desai is an award-winning author and playwright, who writes both fiction and non-fiction. She worked in television as an anchor and producer for more than twenty years before becoming a writer. She is the chairperson of the Arts and Cultural Heritage Trust, which set up the world's first Partition Museum at Town Hall, Amritsar. She also helped to instal the statue of Mahatma Gandhi outside Westminster in the UK. Desai is the author of Darlingji: The True Love Story of Nargis and Sunil Dutt (2007). Her novel Witness the Night won the Costa First Novel Award in the UK, in 2010, and was followed by two others: Origins of Love (2012) and Sea of Innocence (2013). The trilogy featuring Simran Singh has since been optioned for a web series.  Desai's first work of political non-fiction, Jallianwala Bagh: The Real Story (2018), won critical acclaim and inspired exhibitions on the massacre in India, the UK and New Zealand. She also wrote a play, Manto!, which won the TAG Omega award for Best Play in 1999. In 2019, her play Devika Rani: Goddess of the Silver Screen was successfully staged in venues across India.

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    Reviews for Witness the Night

    4.5/5

    3 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Is it possible that a 13 year old girl could stab to death, poison, and set afire thirteen family members, including her mother, father, and brothers? This is a most disturbing novel of manipulation and of a society where female children are disposable liabilities. A small town in Northern India is the setting, and the killings are a result of years of abuse aided by official corruption. One social worker, Simran, a former resident, works to uncover the truth at her own great peril.With so many twists and turns, this is a disturbingly satisfying thriller, where no one is innocent.
    • 5/5
      There are two main narrators in this story with occasional interjection, mainly by email, of a third.The first narrator is Durga herself, the sole survivor of whatever killed her parents and eleven other household members. Fourteen years old, she is keeping a diary, in which she first of all alludes to the events of the night, and then reflects on the events of her life as a girl in the Punjab. From her diary which she is actually writing for Simran the reader is able to piece together what has happened.The second narrator is Simran, the social worker, employed by the authorities to get Durga to talk, and primarily to get a verbal confession from her that she was solely responsible for the massacre of the family. Simran is in her early 40s and through her we get the description of the social problems in modern Punjab. Simran left the small town of Jullundur in disgrace twenty years before. This is the first time she has returned and she doesn't think things have changed all that much. She thinks this will be her first and last case.Simran finds it very difficult to get others to talk about the family and Durga. She tries family friends and Durga's sister in law in London. Binny is the third main voice, mainly by email, and even she tells Simran there are questions she must ask others, and things it will not be helpful for her to know.Crimes are committed in this novel, and certainly it starts with the massacre of an entire Sikh family, but the background is the traditional treatment of unwanted female babies and girl children.At the end of the novel the author says that while the characters of her debut novel are fictitious, the events are not. She pays tribute to her father, a policeman, whom she says is possibly one of the few incorruptible police officers in northern India.
    • 4/5
      It took me a while to get into this book, but I enjoyed reading about the main character and the setting. Simran Singh, a social worker brought in to help with a murder case, is the narrator, but the book switches between her story and the diaries of the murder suspect, 14 year old Durga, as well as emails between Simran and Durga’s sister-in-law. From the start, the reader knows a bit more about the murders as they are described by Durga. Unfortunately, this format made the book a bit choppy so it took me some time to get into it. Durga’s whole family was poisoned and she was found tied to her bed, showing signs of sexual assault, but with no one else to pin the crime on, she is the main suspect. Simran’s old friend calls her back to her hometown, Jullundar, and as she investigates and revisits former acquaintances, the town and community turn distinctly sinister. Simran is older, perpetually single, drinks and smokes, and shows no interest in traditional markers of success, much to the dismay of her mother. I enjoyed reading about her and her uncomfortable attempts to navigate the provincial, stifling town. Both Simran and Durga’s stories focus on the poor position of women in the town, in both large and small ways. However, the mystery plods along for a while and some of the characters turn out to be a bit over the top in evil and motivations. The ending has some deux ex machina characteristics.
    • 4/5
      Simran is a free lance social worker who is called to investigate whether the 14 yr. old girl they have in custody actually killed her whole family. This is far from your typical mystery, it is very character oriented and a cultural study of the old India clashing with the new. In a small town, that still follows the old ways girls are not wanted and what happens to these unwanted children is the focus of this novel. Appalling that things like this still happen in an emerging nation, but the author makes it very clear that is does. I liked this book, liked the characters and found it well written and extremely interesting. Anyone who does not like typical mysteries and likes the study of different cultures will find this book fascinating.

      1 person found this helpful