Nobody expected the liberation of India and birth of Pakistan to be so bloody — it was supposed to be an answer to the dreams of Muslims and Hindus who had been ruled by the British for centuries. But in August 1946, exactly a year before Independence, a cycle of Calcutta riots — targeting Hindus, then Muslims, then Sikhs — spiraled out of control. In the summer of 1947, some of the most brutal and widespread ethnic cleansing in modern history erupted, searing a divide between India and Pakistan. In Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition, Nisid Hajari describes this ordeal, and what it explains about the world today.