Ice-Candy-Man as a Partition Novel: A Tale of Communal Violence And Begotry

Abstract

Bapsi Sidhwa (b. 1938) is a Pakistani novelist of Parsi descent who writes in English. Bapsi Sidhwa is beyond doubt one of the best contemporary novelists writing in English. Her novel Ice-Candy-Man (1991) earned her international acclaim and acceptance as one of the most promising English novelists from South Asia. “The novel brings out Sidhwa’s qualities as a prolific writer, her heightened sense of story and character and her moral vision of community.”1 Ice-Candy-Man belongs to the genre of the partition novel. It is a tale of bloody Partition of India. The novel effectively, realistically and artistically depicts the unforgettable historical moment of Partition which relentlessly divides friends and thus makes them communal and destructive. The paper aims to analyze Ice-Candy-Man as a Partition novel vis-à-vis communal violence and bigotry.