The Volcano

The novel is deeply felt and highly political, exploring the effect of cruel injustices on the minds of a child and a young man... The novel has a curious mixture of styles... The novel owes much to Salman Rushdie's Midnight s Children...

 -India Weekly


The Volcano tells the story of the subcontinent's most turbulent times.

-Eastern Eye


The Volcano is a sweeping novel about the partition of India and the painful birth of Pakistan... This is a novel that brings India to life and gives a vivid glimpse of a way of life in the dying days of the British Empire. Reading it is journey of discovery

-Chris Sawyer, Editor


The Volcano is a compelling account of what happened to a group of friends and a typical village in the subcontinent before partition. Though the subject matter is pretty bleak the book is written with humour and humanity and will appeal to anyone who's keen to assess the tragic consequences of those heady days.

-Simon Fletcher, Poet and novelist


The Volcano by Swaran Chandan is a comprehensive, powerful and perceptive novel about the brutal cost of human lives, the abandonment of friendships and the tensions and division of religions and class that ultimately lead to the partition of India into two countries...

- Sukhjot Dhami, A young historian


Swaran Chandan's 'Volcano' is full of the passion and restless energy of a teeming sub-continent. It is an ambitious novel of epic proportions that makes an important contribution to the growing literature dealing with the subject of the partition of India.

-Debjani Chatterjee

(Writer, editor & chair of the National Association of Writers in Education)


Very rarely does one find a novel that is so pleasant and heartwarming to read. The Volcano is much more than just about partition, it is about self-discovery and finding your place in the world.

-Nasreen Akhtar (English Lecturer, Birmingham)