One of Pakistan’s most celebrated English-language novelists, Bapsi Sidhwa, has died in Houston, Texas, at the age of 86 on December 25.

Born in 1938 in Karachi to a Gujarati Parsi family, Sidhwa grew up in Lahore, where the impact of the Partition in 1947 profoundly influenced her writing. She earned her BA from Kinnaird College for Women in Lahore in 1957 and immigrated to the United States in 1983.

Sidhwa was recognized as one of the finest novelists from Pakistan, with notable works including The Crow Eaters, An American Brat, The Pakistani Bride, and City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore. Her most renowned novel, Ice-Candy Man, published in 1988 and later released in the U.S. as Cracking India, explores the trauma and upheaval of Partition. The novel was adapted into the film Earth by director Deepa Mehta in 1998.

Additionally, her novel Water: A Novel served as the basis for Mehta’s 2005 film Water. Throughout her career, Sidhwa also held teaching positions at several institutions, including Columbia University and the University of Houston.

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Sidhwa received numerous awards and accolades, such as the Lila Wallace Reader’s Digest Writer’s Award, the Mondello Prize for Foreign Authors, and the Sir Syed Day Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in Literature. In 1991, she was honored with the Sitara-i-Imtiaz, Pakistan’s highest national award in the arts, and she was inducted into the Zoroastrian Hall of Fame.