‘In many ways, Zakaria’s book is an important act of solidarity on the part of a Pakistani… Many years ago, at a women’s meeting in Lahore, Pakistani women’s groups exercised this option when, over a day of moving music and intense conversation, they formally apologised to their Bangladeshi sisters. Zakaria’s book follows this distinguished heritage.”
-URVASHI BUTALIA, The Hindu

‘This is a moving, accessible and at times jolting account of the traumatic triumphant memory of 1971 that South Asia is yet to process. Zakaria’s work is a timely attempt to set the 1971 record straight and reaffirm the centrality of people in what constitutes “history”
-RAZA RUMI, author; director of Park Center for Independent Media, Ithaca College, USA

‘Zakaria goes beyond the politics over the 1971 war in all three countries, whether it is silence (Pakistan), a sense of triumph (India) or a yardstick for nationalism (Bangladesh). She pits people’s history against official history… to show how people remember the conflict and how states influence what people remember.”
-DAWN

‘The book deals with forgotten memories and locates them in the mills of state narratives, providing a rare insight into the way the history of the subcontinent unfolded.”
-DAILY STAR

“A positive aspect in Zakaria’s telling of the tole is her conscious effort to avoid taking sides. She begins as a listener and ends her account of the war as an observer.”
-SYED BADRUL AHSAN, Dhaka Tribune

1971 poignantly brings out how 1971 is one of the originary wounds not only for Bangladesh but also for Pakistan and India, the ramifications of which are felt particularly today… Exploring memoirs, school textbooks, oral history accounts, history writing processes, museums and memorials, Zakaria’s timely book carries a temporal and moral imperative in a context where the losses of 1971 are not forgiven by history.
-NAYANIKA MOOKHERJEE, professor at Durham University, author of The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971