the following version of this book was used to create the guide: Hosain, Attia. Sunlight on a Broken Column. Penguin Books, 1989.

Attia Hosain’s first-person narrative, Sunlight on a Broken Column, follows Laila, a fifteen-year-old girl, as she comes of age in Lucknow, India during the 1930s. At the outset of the novel, Laila was living with her guardian Baba Jan and her aunts Abida and Mijida, who observed purdah. The family anxiously passed the days leading to the patriarch’s inevitable death. Laila and her cousin, Zahra, contemplated what would happen when Uncle Hamid became their custodian. While the cousins grew up together, Zahra was unbothered by the family’s adherence to conservative Islamic values while Laila felt torn between the familial ideologies and the philosophies she learned about in school. She was unsure how to reconcile the dogmas of traditionalism and modernity that governed her life within the family and her education, respectively. After Baba Jan’s death, Laila began living with Uncle Hamid and Aunt Saira who embraced a more liberal interpretation of Islam. She no longer observed purdah but continued to feel entrapped by her lack of agency as a young woman. She feared that her aunt and uncle would marry her off as soon as she turned seventeen. Zahra was married shortly after.

In Part Two, when Zahra visited Ashaina, after her honeymoon, she had adopted Western ideologies and openly embraced her sexuality. She introduced Laila into her social sphere at a reception for the Viceroy and dressed her cousin in a modern sari. At the reception, Laila was separated from her cousin and afraid of the drunk man shouting next to her. A stranger helped her out of the frenzy, and she thought about him in the following the days.

In Part Three, Laila’s cousins Kemal and Saleem returned from England and the narrator’s social sphere expanded. She formed a friend group with her cousins and classmates that gave her a sense of belonging for the first time. During the summer, the parties at Hasanpur were punctuated with youthful frivolity and drama. She was elated when Asad’s friend, Ameer, who was the man she met at the reception, visited the house to play tennis. She surmounted her fears and they bantered easily. While she enjoyed their conversations and felt emotionally close to him, she was afraid that their relationship would infringe upon the family’s traditions and abrade her uncle’s authority. Despite her hesitations, Laila began seeing Ameer clandestinely. During a private moment at the house, Aunt Saira entered the room and saw them kissing. Laila was afraid that she would no longer have the autonomy to decide to marry Ameer and that her aunt would arrange a hasty marriage to cover her social indiscretion.

In 1952 Laila returned to Ashaina, in Part Four, to see the ancestral home before it was sold. As she wandered the rooms, she reminisced about her coming of age and the years that followed her marriage to Ameer. While Laila’s family did not formally disown her, she was estranged from them after her marriage. During the years of separation, Nandi continued to be a close friend. Shortly after the narrator found out that she was pregnant, Ameer revealed that he joined the military. He begrudged her family for not accepting him and used the service to escape his feelings of entrapment. Ameer was killed shortly after when attempting to flee captivity. Asad comforted and supported the narrator through her grief. Before Laila left Ashaina, she recognizes that her own indecision and fears had prohibited her from seizing her freedom and autonomy.