SOURCE: Hashmi, Alamgir. Review of The Bride, by Bapsi Sidhwa. World Literature Today 58, no. 4 (autumn 1984): 667-68.

In the following review, Hashmi praises The Bride for its farcical elements and its examination of the complexity of socio-cultural differences in Pakistan.

Sidhwa's first published novel, The Crow Eaters, introduced a robust, farcical style in the Pakistani novel. The Bride was written earlier but has only now been published. It narrates the story of Zaitoon, who lost her parents in the Indo-Pakistan riots in the summer of 1947 and was adopted by Lahore-bound Qasim, a Himalayan tribesman also fleeing the mountains after committing a crime and losing his wife and children to the fatalities inflicted by smallpox.

Zaitoon is so named by Qasim, after his own late daughter, and raised from the age of five in the city of Lahore as his adopted daughter. Against better counsel, he decides to marry her...