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.

Sidhwa was 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 received her BA from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore in 1957. She immigrated to the United States in 1983.

Sidhwa has been widely celebrated as one of the finest novelists from Pakistan. Her works include The Crow Eaters, An American Brat, The Pakistani Bride and City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore.

One of her most renowned novels, Ice-Candy Man, was written in 1988 and published in the United States four years later under the title Cracking India. The novel explores the trauma and upheaval of the Partition. In 1998, it was adapted into the film Earth by director Deepa Mehta.

Another of her works, Water: A Novel, served as the basis for Mehta’s 2005 film Water.

Sidhwa also served as a professor at several institutions, including Columbia University and the University of Houston.

She won several awards and accolades, including the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the Mondello Prize for Foreign Authors and the Sir Syed Day Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature.

Sidhwa received the Sitara-i-Imtiaz in 1991, Pakistan’s highest national honour in the arts. She was also inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame.

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