Product Description
A young Indian villager, Omar Ghazi, is plunged into the independence and partition of India and Pakistan in the greatest mass exodus of the 20th century. Once he reaches Pakistan, he finds out that the struggle against injustice is not over as he is about to face an oppressive feudal landlord. He fights for his freedom across three continents. Omar, who is now a grandfather living in California, tells the story of his life and the lessons he learnt to his grandchildren. He wants them to remember his generation’s struggle. The children want to hear real stories, full of curiosity and questions. Together they re-live the past, and hope for a better future in a captivating action-adventure.
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Reviewed by Audrey Larson for Rebeccas Reads (3/08)
The book’s character, Omar Ghazi, is a grandfather living in California. He was born in India in the late 1920s. It was a time of strife, struggle and conflict, as India eventually gained independence from Britain in 1947, and the partition of Pakistan and India into Hindu and Muslin enclaves. Ten million people made a mass exodus, and over a million people lost their lives.
Omar Ghazi wants his grandchildren to know family history, and he tells them the story of his journey across three continents. Since they have a good life in California, they have many questions about his early life, travels, getting to England under difficult circumstances, and then back to his homeland.
We Americans do not really know much about life in his homeland, really, except there still seems to be so much violence, struggle and strife over there. Perhaps there always will be. But this story is really a personal fictional narrative of one man’s life, family and journey, as he wishes his grandchildren to learn, remember it and pass it along.
Omar learned much living and working in England. It broadened his horizons, and he shared what he learned with his people when he returned home. “Walk to Freedom” has 112 pages, and someone with an interest in that part of the world and time period, may wish to read this book.
Rating: 4 / 5
This book is a fictionalized version of Javed Mohammed parents story as refugees during the violent partition of India and Pakistan . The book is a clever mix of fact and fiction, which is hard to discern. I found the book to be an easy read, but once I started it was hard to put down.
The story starts with Omar Ghazi the protagonist growing up in India, describing what the village was like and his experience of being the first member in his family to go to school. He then grows up and in his teens has to face the partition. Although this is an “escape” story, the theme of education and its value plays through the plot line of the entire novel even though the locals change.
Once Omar and his family reach Pakistan which should be a safe haven, they have to face feudal landlords who extort the local villagers. Omar takes a stand to help win back their freedom and to get an education. Along the way he face all types of hardships but he never gives up. His journey takes him to Iran, Turkey and to England where he wants to earn enough money to pay back his debts.
There is a twist of romance thrown in, but the author keeps the backdrop a period drama from the 1940s and takes us there as a grandfather narrating the story to his children.
I highly recommend this book, as it gives so many insights into a forgotten world.
Rating: 5 / 5