Kartography - Softcover

Shamsie, Kamila

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156029731 ISBN 13: 9780156029735

Publisher: Harper Paperbacks, 2004

Synopsis

Raheen and her best friend, Karim, share an idyllic childhood in upper-class Karachi. Their parents were even once engaged to each others' partners until they rematched in what they call "the fiancée swap." But as adolescence distances the friends, Karim takes refuge in maps while Raheen searches for the secret behind her parents' exchange. What she uncovers reveals not just a family's but a country's turbulent history-and a grown-up Raheen and Karim are caught between strained friendship and fated love.

A love story with a family mystery at its heart, Kartography is a dazzling novel by a young writer of astonishing maturity and exhilarating style. Shamsie transports us to a world we have not often seen in fiction-vibrant, dangerous, sensuous Pakistan. But even as she takes us far from the familiar, her story of passion and family secrets rings universally true.

About this title

Review:

Kartography is Kamila Shamsie's impressive third novel. At its heart is rather a traditional love story-cum-family saga. Karim and Raheen are anagram swapping "fated friends". Until the age of 13, when Karim moved to London, they were virtually raised as brother and sister. Their parents had once been engaged to each other. The unravelling of quite why this matrimonial square dance occurred is juxtaposed with Karim and Raheen's own, and decidedly more protracted, romance.

As the title suggests, mapping--geographical, political and emotional-- is central to the book. The "comic" spelling is a wry allusion to its setting: the troubled Pakistani city of Karachi, a place that, as Karim observes, worships "at the altar of K". Karim, Raheen and their friends Sonia and Zia all belong to the privileged Karachi elite. Born on the right "side of the Clifton Bridge" they seem immune from Karachi's endemic corruption, violence and religious and ethnic intolerance but they and their families, like the rest of the city's inhabitants, have all been horrifically scarred by events of the 1971 civil war.

Like Austen, or perhaps more accurately Forster, Shamsie is wonderfully adept at capturing the petty rivalries and social games of Pakistan's highly stratified bourgeoisie society--Zia's house is sagely described as "always full of people worth cultivating, rather than people worth having in your home." There are a few (well-acknowledged) nods to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and even Homer's Odyssey gets a look in but Shamsie wears her learning lightly. She manages to make Karim and Raheen's journey to toward engagement, both with the realities of Karachi and with each other, into a profound meditation on the nature of love, storytelling and politics. --Travis Elborough

Review:

PRAISE FOR KARTOGRAPHY "[Shamsie] packs her story with the playful evidence of her highflying intelligence." --San Francisco Chronicle "A gorgeous novel of perimeters and boundaries, of the regions-literal and figurative-in which we're comfortable moving about and those through which we'd rather not travel . . . Shamsie's wry humor infuses and quickens the narrative, leavening even the most serious scenes without detracting from their emotional weight." --Los Angeles Times "E. M. Forster's famous plea--'only connect'--reverberates passionately throughout this forceful tale of childhood, love and the power of story-telling." --The Independent "[In Kartography] words are used as vehicles conveying both emotions and intelligence, while at the same time - because the whole novel hinges on a secret that is hidden from the narrator--Shamsie knows that words aren't exactly everything, either." --The Guardian
"Deftly woven, provocative . . . Shamsie's blistering humor and ear for dialogue scorches through [a] whirl of whiskey and witticisms." --The Observer "The descriptions of Karachi were so graphic I could feel the heat and the tension emanating from the pages of the book...Gripping and thought-provoking." --BBC.com "A shimmering, quick-witted lament and love story...This is a complex novel, deftly executed and rich in emotional coloratura and wordplay." --Publishers Weekly, starred review "[Kartography] leaves you feeling wistful and touches some place in your heart you didn't even know existed...Even though the story came to a magnificent end yet you wish [Shamsie] hadn't finished the book." --The Rumpus

"A modern-day romance in a war-ridden city, how love continues to blossom in the rubble of a devastated land."
--Booklist (08/01/2003)

"Shamsie's unique slice-of-life tale beautifully illustrates the unbreakable bonds of love and friendship that are made more durable by forgiveness."

--curledup.com

"Its artful uncovering of how people hide from themselves and one another echoes Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things."
--Kirkus (07/01/2003)

"A shimmering, quick-witted lament and love story. This is a complex novel, deftly executed and rich in emotional coloratura and wordplay."
-- (07/14/2003)

"An ambitious novel that is both a love story and a commentary on the problems that have plagued Pakistan."
--Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Described as a young Anita Desai, [Shamsie's] third book, about Karachi during the turbulent 1990s, is worth all the fuss."
--Harper's Bazaar (08/01/2003)

"A gorgeous novel. Shamsie's wry humor infuses and quickens the narrative."
--Los Angeles Times

"At her best describing teeming Karachi and the love, fear and loathing it stirs in the hearts of her characters."

--The Virginia Pilot

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0156029731
• ISBN 13: 9780156029735
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 305