Wikipedia
Paleeta is a 600-page Urdu novel, the second major novel of Paigham Afaqui, following his first novel Makaan, published in 1989. The novel depicts the life of an idealist young man who is champion of civil society and democratic rights. The present world has been mirrored through the life of prisoners of Kala Pani, a penal settlement established on the islands of Andaman & Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal in the second half of the nineteenth century by the British government. The first Urdu novel of its kind in narrative, technique and subject matter, it has stimulated wide interest in Urdu as a language emerging as major fertile ground for fiction in the 21st century. The novel has been identified as one of the most powerful voices of democracy in the post-independent India.
The author has a masters degree in history, and served in the islands of Andaman & Nicobar for four years from 1980-1984 as a senior police officer.