Veera Hiranandani and Peter Lerangis are two historical fiction writers who write books about outstanding events, The Night Diary and Throwback. Readers of both books will notice similarities and differences between them. Despite being set in distinct moments, The First Kashmir War and the 09/11 attack, in both stories the authors try to portray the facts of disastrous conflicts caused by religious intolerance, adding a fictional plot throughout the main characters who are teenagers that narrate their perspective as people that experienced it. In the first book, The Night Diary, Nysha, the main character, an 11-year-old girl, lives near to the boarder that divides Pakistan and India during the Kashmir War and, due to the war, is very worried about to be attack by terrorist because of her family’s religion. She also talks about the sad reality of the people that live around her house, the results of the conflict and how the situation was precarious. On the other hand, “Throwback” contains more fiction, being the first book of a trilogy where the main character is a boy named Corey that can time travel. He decides to go back when the twin towers were destroyed.
In several types of works that refer to similar themes, points of similarity can be observed. The novels under analysis, for example, have protagonists who are in the same age group, despite the stories taking place in different centuries. They tell how religious intolerance can be harmful added to the lack of empathy and the sadness that is caused by international conflicts that often become aggressive. Nysha suffers from the grief of her mother as Corey with his grandfather’s and they find a way to discharge all this anguish. The girl writes messages for her late mother in her diary, while saying about the aspects of the war that she is expecting and the boy just tries to remember good moments that he had with his grandfather that also died.
“The Night Diary” and “Throwback”, homewer there are different aspects among them too. Veera Hiranandani novels shed light on the old status of Indus Pakistan and why it was divided, presenting The Kashmir War facts that basically was the conflict between Indus that live in Pakistan in today’s days and Muslims that are situated in India. As the story progressed, the cause of the war was explained, having details like the shared interest in territory and dispute to establish a more predominant culture in the place on both sides. Nysha, the main character, has the misfortune like the other people around her to live near to the region of conflict between the two religious groups, and have to worry unfortunately just like her father who had to take care of a son and a daughter. After the war gets worse in the Pakistan territory, Nysha’s family become refugees and leave their homeland. The author could well represent the environment during this period on the Asian continent and the dire circumstances the humans had to submit .
Throwback is a book narrated by a boy named Corey who gains a magical artifact from his grandfather after he dies. The boy use this magic object to time travel for all the trilogy, but in the first book that I have read in specific he use it to go to the 09/11 disaster era where he understand the motivations of the muslim men that destroyed the twin towers. He discovered that the Al-Qaeda motivations, the terrorist organization, was connected to the conflicts among american leaders and islamic fundamentalists, because the U.S.A integration in the constantly conflicts in the Middle East which envolve this guys and other religion people. A few days later, Corey attends the event and turns back to his normal life feeling bad for the victims.
In conclusion, it should be noted that the two previously mentioned books are different books with distinct plots, but that have similar themes, despite the internal message that both also pass about people’s awareness of religious intolerance. The Stories talks about empathy and how it can be important in conflict moments, being the first step towards reaching a consensus with those on the other side of the discussion. In most of the times rationality can open up ways out of the problems you wouldn’t want to face. And the main characters, Corey and Nysha, served to show that during the novels like teenagers who don’t let arrogance go to their heads as much as the adults present there, Muslims, Hindus and US government members.
