Bapsi Sidhwa, one of Pakistan’s most acclaimed English-language novelists, died in Houston, Texas in the United States on Wednesday, Dawn reported. She was 86 years old. Born in 1938 in Karachi to a Gujarati-Parsi family, she grew up in Lahore, where she witnessed firsthand the impact of the Partition in 1947 – an experience that shaped her writing.

Sidhwa is also known for her collaborative work with filmmaker Deepa Mehta. Her 1991 novel Ice Candy Man was adapted by Mehta as the film 1947: Earth (1998). Sidhwa was inspired by Mehta’s 2005 movie Water and wrote a novel of the same name based it. A documentary about Sidhwa’s life called Bapsi: Silences of My Life was released in 2022.

Here is a list of Bapsi Sidhwa’s essential works of fiction:

The Crow Eaters (1978)

Seeking capitalist ventures and fortune, Faredoon “Freddy” Junglewalla moves his family – his pregnant wife, children and belligerent mother-in-law – from their ancestral village in rural India to the bustling metropolis of Lahore. Welcomed by the small but tight-knit Parsi community, Freddy establishes a booming business and his family soon became one of the most respected in Lahore.

It seems that the only thing holding Freddy back is his sizeable and burdensome mother-in-law. As his family grows, and events – funny, tragic and life-changing – occur, Freddy’s reach permeates the wider country and an intricate portrait of colonial India is revealed. But when tragedy forces Freddy to rethink his legacy, intimations of historic change loom on the country’s horizon.

The Pakistani Bride (1982)

Zaitoon, a new bride, is desperately unhappy in her marriage and is contemplating the ultimate escape – the one from which there is no return. Zaitoon, an orphan, is adopted by Qasim, who has left the isolated hill town where he was born and made a home for the two of them in the glittering, decadent city of Lahore. As the years pass, Qasim makes a fortune but grows increasingly nostalgic about his life in the mountains. Impulsively, he promises Zaitoon in marriage to a man of his tribe. But for Zaitoon, giving up the civilised city life she remembers to become the bride of this hard, inscrutable husband proves traumatic to the point where she decides to run away, though she knows that by the tribal code, the punishment for such an act is death.

Ice Candy Man (1988)

This is the story of the upheaval of the 1947 partition of India as seen through the eyes of a Parsee girl growing up in Lahore. Through her relationships with her Hindu Ayah, the Muslim cook, the Sikh zoo attendant and the ice candy man, Sidhwa shows how ordinary citizens reacted to the horrific turmoil.

An American Brat (1993)

This novel chronicles the adventures of a young Pakistani girl in America. The extended family of Feroza Ginwalla, a lively and temperamental girl, agonises over the decision to send her to America for a three-month holiday. This act of apparent audacity arises from concern over Feroza’s conservative attitudes, which stem from Pakistan’s rising tide of fundamentalism. Feroza’s chaperone in America, an uncle only six years her senior, is her guide, friend, and the bane of her existence. Her relationship and adventures shape her alternatively hilarious and terrifying perceptions of the US. Feroza’s family in Pakistan, meanwhile, is in delicious turmoil over the possibility that American ways will ruin her.

Water (2006)

Water follows the life of eight-year-old Chuyia, a child bride who is abandoned at a widow’s ashram after the demise of her 50-year-old husband. There, she is forced to live out a life of penitence until death. The novel was based on the film of the same name directed by Deepa Mehta.

Their Language of Love (2013)

A wife worries for her family’s survival during the 1965 Indo-Pak war. A mother is horrified when she learns that her daughter wants to marry her American boyfriend. An American housewife living in Lahore has a tempestuous affair with a Pakistani minister. An aged matriarch travels to the US to discover she must confront a traumatic memory from her past.

Nuanced and observant, this is a collection of short stories by Sidhwa.

Corrections and Clarifications: An earlier version of this article had erroneously stated that Deepa Mehta had adapted Sidhwa’s novel Water into a film. The article has been edited to reflect the fact that Sidhwa wrote the novel based on the film directed by Mehta.