Hour Before Dawn English 2014

Four weeks before the Babri Masjid is demolished, Delhi wakes up to read accounts of India's Secret History. Appearing daily on the walls of the city's residential neighbourhoods as tantalizing pamphlets, Secret History claims to reveal India's suppressed past, which is rhetorical and rhythmic, dark and depressing, violent and vengeful. Are these accounts true or fictional? Who writes the Secret History? These questions do not engage Rasheed Halim, who is grappling with the possibility of imminent death thanks to his cancer which has recurred, despite treatment. He becomes a recluse, wants to die, lives through a night of rioting in which not a drop of blood is spilled, and pops tranquillizers to live from one day to another. In desperation, he turns to a helpline, where a mysterious voice kindles in him the desire to live, and to join a band of people whose mission is to identify the author of the Secret History. Thought-provoking and suspenseful, The Hour before Dawn is a remarkable story of a terminally ill man's search for meaning and his eventual quest to find out why the lust for blood runs deep in some people.