July 1914. Young Englishwoman Vivian Rose Spencer is running up a mountainside in an ancient land, surrounded by figs and cypresses. Soon she will discover the Temple of Zeus, the call of adventure, and the ecstasy of love. Thousands of miles away a twenty-year old Pathan, Qayyum Gul, is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army.
July, 1915. Qayyum Gul is returning home after losing an eye at Ypres, his allegiances in tatters. Viv is following the mysterious trail of her beloved. They meet on a train to Peshawar, unaware that a connection is about to be forged between their lives - one that will reveal itself fifteen years later, on the Street of Storytellers, when a brutal fight for freedom, an ancient artefact and a mysterious green-eyed woman will bring them together again.
A powerful story of friendship, injustice, love and betrayal, A God in Every Stone carries you across the globe, into the heart of empires fallen and conquered, reminding us that we all have our place in the chaos of history and that so much of what is lost will not be forgotten.
Passionate ... Individual characters, drawn together by historical imperatives, change each other, like tints laid side by side in a watercolour (Independent)
Love, politics, history - it has it all (Sunday Telegraph)
A fast-moving, well-researched story that reminds us of the contradictions of Empire in the age of the first worldwide war ... A God in Every Stone is a valuable reminder that the legacy of the Great War stretched far beyond Versailles (Joanna Biggs Sunday Times)
First-rate - intelligent, vivid and completely absorbing (Harry Ritchie Daily Mail)
Burns with quiet ferocity in every elegant, measured line ... beautifully written, thought-provoking (Tina Jackson Metro)
Evokes the past beautifully ... a moving story of love and betrayal, generosity and brutality, hope and injustice, full of characters that stay with you ... A God in Every Stone will surely confirm Shamsie's increasing eminence in the British world of letters (Tabish Khair Financial Times)
Its pages are lit by Shamsie's eloquent prose (Helen Dunmore Guardian)
A sensual treasury of descriptive ornamentation (Wendy Idle The Times)
The voices of those silenced from the pages of history resound in Kamila Shamsie's accomplished, atmospheric sixth novel ... Shamsie excavates the deepest corners of the human heart, leaving few stones unturned in this exploration of how human motivation can shape history (Anita Sethi Observer)
It is a rare writer who can transport her readers in just a few pages to another place and time. Shamsie's writing is so evocative that she does just that ... complex and spell-binding (Lucy Popescu Independent on Sunday)
