Hello Book Dragons!
How’s your reading coming along? Have you been closing in on your Goodreads goal of this year?
I personally haven’t set a goal this year. I am just going with the flow 😅. This year, my reading progress have been slower but still better than last year. One of my recent additions to the “Read” pile is Beyond Beliefs by Sohail Husain.
I don’t usually read non fiction except for the times when I do pick up semi-autobiographies or memoirs. Beyond Beliefs by Dr. Sohail Husain was the latest memoir that I read. What piqued my interest was the underlying historical key events and the way these events impacted the author’s parents, grandparents and their respective families.
‘Beyond Beliefs’ is a compelling and extraordinary true story spanning The First World War,
The Great Depression, The Partition of India and The Holocaust.
This epic memoir recounts the story of Sohail Husain’s parents and grandparents, whose lives were engulfed by momentous events of the 20th century. His parents, Karola and Afzal, were separated by birthplace, race, faith, language and age, but their common experience of unimaginable upheaval and loss ultimately brought them together. Their love story was complicated and unconventional, but enduring. ‘Beyond Beliefs’ is a testament to human spirit overcoming tragedy and adversity.
Sohail’s evocative prose delivers a deeply personal insight into his family’s journey that spans continents and cultures. It exposes the horrific consequences of war and violent extremism, and the struggles faced by immigrants and refugees, still very relevant today. In places distressing, frequently emotive and sometimes amusing, this powerful thought-provoking homage reveals amazing discoveries, astonishing coincidences and history repeating itself.
Beyond Beliefs is a well-documented true account spanning years of research that follows the extraordinary tale of an Indian Muslim migrant, a German refugee and their families who lived through the four most eventful episodes in history: First World War, the Great Depression, Partition of India and the Holocaust.
The book is divided into eighteen parts delving deeper into the lives of people involved against the backdrop of the respective historical timeline with a postscript at the end. All of it is supported by letters, ancestry trees, photos, maps and a lot of other supporting records. It is evident that the author went out of his way to collect all these information to craft this thoroughly documented account.
As one can imagine, Beyond Beliefs is a big book at around 520 pages but reading it did not feel tedious to me. I love history and love learning about the people who have lived through all the good and bad parts of the 20th century.
The author begins the book by recounting about his grandparents, one who actively fought in the World War I while the other moved from India to Argentina. His parents are presented next – his father who was a Muslim immigrant from India and his mother who was a Jewish refugee who fled Germany. They both later meet in post-war Britain. It was fascinating to find how the author’s parents found love amidst a time of loss and tragedy. Interracial marriages have quite a lot of challenges even in today’s day and age, so, to see how they fell in love and how their relationship stood the test of time was very charming to witness as a reader.
The author also talks about the uncertain future that refugees and immigrants struggled with (and continue to battle with it to this day) at the time of wars when there’s a rise in hostility and bitterness.
Beyond Beliefs is such a thought-provoking and poignant read. It’s a reminder of what had transpired in history and how it ultimately shaped the people’s lives – for some leading to generational trauma while for others allowing them to give their children a chance at better lives. This book acts as an aide-memoire giving readers a glimpse into the distress and hardship wars bring but how it can at times forge new relationships especially when faced with an unpredictable future.
If you’re someone like me who enjoys history and personal anecdotes, I highly recommend you check out Beyond Beliefs by Sohail Husain.
Get yourself a copy of this historical memoir here.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sohail Husain was born in London (UK) in 1951. His mother, a German Jewish refugee, and his father, an Indian Muslim immigrant, scraped a living working London’s famous street markets. After leaving school, he studied geography at the University of Nottingham and was awarded a PhD there in 1976. Subsequently, he enjoyed a varied career that included 13 years as a university lecturer, 15 years with an NGO dedicated to creating safer communities and 12 years as an adviser to the UN on programmes to prevent violence against women and girls. Following retirement, he embarked on research into his family’s history that led to many amazing
discoveries and ultimately to the publication of this memoir. Sohail has two daughters and five grandchildren, and has lived with his wife, Caroline, in south Hampshire (UK) for more than 45
years.
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Signing off,
Sohinee aka bookarlo