A dramatic, luminous first novel of families and nations broken and formed, "Partitions" is set during the violent 1947 partition of India, and introduces an extraordinary novelist who writes with the force and lyricism of poetry.

A freedom fighter who fled El Salvador discovers that in the U.S. he is a second-class citizen in a racist country. The novel chronicles his dangerous journey across several borders, all the way to Washington and disillusion.

"Back in Zanzibar, Saleh Omar had a furniture shop, owned a house, was a husband and father. Now, newly arrived at London's Gatwick Airport, he is just another asylum seeker. A mahogany box of fragrant ud is his most precious possession, silence his only protection. Meanwhile, Latif Mahmud, a young professor, lives quietly alone in his London flat. When the two encounter each other in an English seaside town, the narratives each carries of their shared...