'The Sirens of September': A novel revisits Hyderabad's dramatic fall in 1948

In the summer of 2017, while walking along a sea-facing boulevard in Mumbai, Zeenath Khan began imagining a novel set against one of the most dramatic episodes in Hyderabad's history.

India's 1948 military takeover of the princely state, she felt, had everything a novelist could ask for — lavish settings, wayward characters, political intrigue and high stakes.

That idea eventually became her debut novel, "The Sirens of September", published by Penguin.

The historical novel retells the events surrounding India's takeover and integration of Hyderabad through a mix of real and imagined characters, offering the story largely from the perspective of those on the losing side.

Khan, who divides her time between Hyderabad and New York City, said the events unfolding in the south alongside Partition have received far less attention in popular literature and cinema.

"While books and cinema have often depicted India's Partition, the simultaneous drama played out in the south has been relegated to academic papers," she told PTI.

She describes the Hyderabad of her novel as a lost world, drawing comparisons with the American South depicted in "Gone with the Wind" and Sicily in Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's "The Leopard".

"It tells the tale of princely Hyderabad's collapse through real and imagined characters. Throughout my writing process, I tried to instill a sense of nostalgia in my readers for a time and place that we cannot regain," Khan said.

Operation Polo was the code name for the Indian military operation launched on September 13, 1948, which led to the integration of the princely state of Hyderabad with India.

At the heart of Khan's story is Farishteh, a 15-year-old aristocratic girl whose privileged world begins to unravel as she finds herself navigating political intrigue, international espionage and a long-distance courtship with an air force cadet.

Khan said Farishteh emerged even before she had worked out the plot of the novel.

"I conjured the character of Farishteh even before I had figured out my novel's plot. My protagonist was going to be an aristocratic teenage girl who was idealistic, clever, and brave," she said.

"Her personality was a foil to the adults in the novel whose character attributes ranked high on the dark triad," she added.

Writing the story through the eyes of a young woman in 1948, however, posed its own challenges.

Khan said a teenage girl at the time would have had limited agency, but choosing the perspective of the middle-aged men running the state would have made for a far less engaging narrative.

"Yet if I'd written it from the point-of-view of the middle-aged men in charge, it would have been rather depressing as, whether or not they admitted it to themselves, they helmed a sinking ship," she said.

To recreate the period, Khan undertook extensive research, going through newspapers from 1946 to 1948 and consulting books, biographies, memoirs and first-person accounts.

Pathé newsreels available on YouTube also helped her reconstruct everyday details of the era.

"I read books and watched movies that depicted life in the 1940s to describe modes of transport, communication, and fashion. Biographies, memoirs, and first-person narratives including those from family members were invaluable," she said.

The result is an attempt to bring the final years of princely Hyderabad to life not simply as a historical episode, but as a vanished world seen through the eyes of those who lived through its collapse.