At possibly one of the worst periods in the history of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, Nizam Shah has produced his memoirs of a Kashmiri in Pakistan. It charts his childhood in Kashmir in the period leading onto the partition of British India into two successor states, and the bloody legacy of a divided Kashmir which would continue to confront the author during a lifetime spent in South Asia. The memoir is remarkable because it negotiates penetrating insights within the transition from a nascent flame of Kashmiriyat to a full-fledged participation within the power structure of Pakistan’s new commercial and societal elites. His wit, elegance and sense of irony never desert him in his new homeland. But a feeling of pain is woven into the words and narratives of this remarkable memoir.