Summary

The first section of the Night Diary begins with Nisha’s letter to her late mother on July 14, 1947 and ends with her letter on July 29, 1947. This epistolary novel entirely consists of letters from Nisha to her mother and begins with the 12-year-old’s description of her and her twin brother Amil’s birthday. She receives a purple diary – the same one she now writes in – from Kazi, her family’s cook, while her brother receives charcoal pencils from him. Nisha’s father, whom she calls Papa, gives her a piece of her late mother’s jewelry, as he does every year. Nisha writes about how silly her brother is and how terribly he performs in school, owing to the fact that for him all the letters on the page jump around inexplicably. She finds reading easy and knows that her father is prouder of...