Search for a New Land

A Muslim feudal family in provincial Bihar Shareef faces devastating grief and anguish during the Partition of India in 1947 and then again, the partition of Bengal in 1971 when lines are drawn across their lands and hearts. Originally published in Urdu as Do Gaz Zameen, Abdus Samad's deeply emotional and political novel traces the journey of the Hussain family from the 1920s to 1970s, as they travel through the Bihar province, to Calcutta, Karachi, and Dhaka and take us along intensely critical political events that shaped the formation of new lands and new identities in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

Abdus Samad received the Sahitya Akademi award in 1990 for Do Gaz Zameen. His prolific literary career in Urdu fiction has garnered for him several other accolades and awards such as the Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad, the Ghalib award, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Urdu Academy in Bihar. Search for a New Land is the first translation into English of this epic novel.