This volume takes us away from the 'history' of official records to the domain of tragedy, where the drama of Partition was played with a pang in the heart. It is a people's history, based on experiences, recollections and reminiscences in the form of eyewitness accounts, testimonials and oral narratives. These are occasionally, where required, supplemented by official documentation. The human dimension of the division of both Punjab and Bengal is well represented in the twenty-three articles of this volume, which bring out the totality of the experience, often missed by the historian. The contributors show us that inspite of the creation of two nations (and after 1971, a third), there is a bond of oneness among the divided, and a kind of nostalgia for the undivided past. Various genres of creativity, films, T.V. serials, paintings, folk dramas and, most important of all, literature and poetry show us how pain and anguish did not belong to the followers of one community or one segment of society but was shared by all the people involved in it. The Partition is sought to be studied through the literary representations of the period, which mirror the important contemporary concerns.