Logo
Prev
search
Print
addthis
Rotate
Help
Next
Contents
All Pages
Browse Issues
Home
'
Good Reading : June 2014
Contents
GENERAL FICTION June 2014 main A God in Every Stone Kamila Shamsie In the European summer of 1914 a young English woman is allowed to accompany an expedition to find the Temple of Zeus. With a much older Turkish archaeologist, she experiences the excitement of discovery, the call of adventure and the sweet taste of love. The war starts before she returns to England, where she works in a hospital caring for casualties. Meanwhile a young Pashtun man is learning the true cost of loyalty to the British Ar my at the First Battle of Ypres. Cold, wet and gravely injured, he loses an eye and gains a perspective on how Indian soldiers are regarded in the home country. In 1915 the paths of these two people cross on a train to Peshawar.Vivian is in search of an ancient artefact that her lover had descr ibed to her, and Qayyum is returning to some semblance of a life with his family. This meeting presages a connection between them that reveals itself 15 years later after a horrific slaughter in the Street of Storytellers, where historic tales are kept alive by repetition to illiterate passers-by. Parts of the novel allow the reader to lose themselves in the story, but at its core this tale is not feasible. Too many subordinate characters are cyphers; perhaps there is a longer, more complete story waiting to emerge. Bloomsbury $29.99 Reviewed by Daniel O’Brien More about Kamila Shamsie Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels. Her works have been translated into more than 20 languages. Born in Karachi in 1973, she grew up in an English-speaking family. But it was difficult to get hold of books in English during the dictatorship of Zia-ul-Haq. Shamsie’s mother, a literary critic, would badger travelling friends to bring back books. Kamila Shamsie moved to the US to study creative writing and wrote her first novel, In the City by the Sea, when she was at the University of Massachusetts. She was only 25 years old when it was published. 32_33_wom_d.indd 33 7/05/14 10:59 PM
Links
Archive
May 2014
July 14
Navigation
Previous Page
Next Page
