Kartography

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Soul mates from birth Karim and Raheen are irrevocably bound to one another and to Karachi. It beats in their hearts - violent, polluted, corrupt, vibrant, brave and ultimately, home. However, Raheen is fiercely loyal and naively blinkered and she resents Karim's need to map their city and to expand the privileged world they know. When Karim is forced to leave for London their differences of opinion become a painful quarrel. As the years go by they let a barrier of silence build between them until, finally, they are brought together during a dry summer of strikes and ethnic violence and their relationship is poised between strained friendship and fated love.
Impassioned and touching Kartography is a love song to Karachi. In her extraordinary new novel, Kamila Shamsie shows us that whatever happens in the world we must never forget the complicated war in our own hearts.

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The globe spins. Mountain ranges skim my fingers; there is static above the Arabian Sea. Pakistan is split in two, but undivided. This world is out of date.Rain outside. If it reaches Karachi, the waves will swell further. The airport, though, is inland. From there to here is no distance at all if you look at the map of the world. But distance is not about miles and kilometres, it is about fear. Who said that? Someone who wasn't married to a pilot, I'd guess. I unscrew a jar of ink. Scent of smudged words and metal fills the air.Do all tentacled creatures produce ink, Raheen? Does the cuttlefish? Can you write on the waves with cuttleink?I close my eyes, and wrap my fingers around a diamond-shaped bone. I still hear the world spinning. I spin with it, spin into a garden. At dusk. And yes, those are shoulder pads stitched into my shirt.1986.Of course the garden is located where all our beginnings, Karim's and mine, are located: Karachi. That spider-plant city where, if you know what to look for and some higher power is feeling indulgent, you might find a fossilized footprint of Alexander. The Great. He led his army through Karachi, long, long before the spider-plant effect took hold, when Karachi was a harbour named Krokola. Perhaps Alexander's was the first army that stirred up the sand along the eastern coast of the Arabian Sea.That's an interesting thought.Though, really, it's never been proved that Karachi is Krokola, and even if it is Alexander probably never stepped foot on its shores; so any ancient Macedonian footprints with heelstamps of authority in Karachi's rocks must belong to Alexander's admiral, Nearchus, who wasn't even Macedonian. He was a Cretan and that sounds rude.I don't know if Karim and I were actually looking for ancient footsteps in the rockery of Karim's garden that October evening, the day all boxes were unpacked and the move from Karim's old house finally completed, but I do know that we were more than happy with our discovery of a fossilized cuttlefish.'You sure it's a cuttlefish?' I said, turning the diamond-shaped fossil over in my hands. We were sitting cross-legged, side by side, on the grass that bordered the triangle of soil on which the rockery had been set out. Mud on his knees and chlorophyll on mine, though as we sat close, swaying back with laughter and forward with curiosity, the colours were mingling, dun shot through with emerald.'Course it is. Well, cuttlebone. No sign of fish flesh on that thing.''So flesh is what makes a fish a fish?''Interesting question. Is a sole without flesh still a sole? Either way, a cuttlefish isn't a fish at all.' Karim waved his arms about like someone trying to breakdance. 'It's got tentacles.'He fell back on his elbows, nearly flattening an ant, which, impervious, did not waver from its path but crawled over his arm and proceeded along through the short-cropped grass. 'Imagine it.' He looked around. 'This used to be an ocean. If you squint, can't y Excerpted from Kartography by Kamila Shamsie All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

In this third novel by Shamsie, whose Salt and Saffron landed her on the Orange Prize Futures List, Raheen and Karim share a friendship that in some ways predates their very births. Yet at age 13, they are separated when Karim's family leaves Pakistan, though even more difficult is the divorce of Karim's parents, which blights the relationship between the two friends. Several themes run through the narrative, including how the civil war that divided Pakistan and Bangladesh created turmoil in personal relationships, how personality can be shaped by geography, and how friendships can only truly survive if each takes responsibility for the needs of the other. Shamsie uses a variety of techniques to tell her story, from Karim's hand-drawn maps to letter collages to more conventional prose, and the sensual quality of her writing is best described in her own words: "I unscrew a jar of ink. Scent of smudged words and metal fill the air." Yet despite the many strongly evocative word pictures, there are also patches of bland dialog that detract from the overall effectiveness of the writing. Of interest to collections with a strong international and multicultural focus.-Caroline Hallsworth, City of Greater Sudbury, Ont. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

The trauma of war is typically gauged by loss of lives and property, not broken hearts, but the microcosm is often as powerful an indicator of loss as the macrocosm-or so Shamsie seems to say in her latest novel, a shimmering, quick-witted lament and love story. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, is a place under constant siege: ethnic, factional, sectarian and simply random acts of violence are the order of the day. This violence-and the lingering legacy of the civil war of 1971-is the backdrop for the story of Raheen and Karim, a girl and boy raised together in the 1970s and '80s, whose lives are shattered when a family secret is revealed. The two friends and their families are members of the city's wealthy elite, personified in its shallowness by family members like Raheen's supercilious Aunt Runty and in guilty social conscience by Karim himself. This is a complex novel, deftly executed and rich in emotional coloratura and wordplay (the title is inspired by Karim's burgeoning obsession with mapmaking, and spelled with a "k" after the city's name). Shamsie pays homage to Calvino with a pastiche of Invisible Cities written by Raheen at her upstate New York college. But Shamsie's novel deals more with ghosts than cities: ghosts of relationships, ghosts of childhood, ghosts of love. A ghost is said to haunt a tree where Raheen's father-once engaged to Karim's mother-carved their initials long ago. Two ghosts representing Karim and Raheen walk an invisible city in Raheen's Calvino tribute. As someone said to Raheen: "There's a ghost of a dream you don't even try to shake free of because you're too in love with the way she haunts you." In similar fashion, Raheen remains in love with Karachi, family and friends, even as one by one their facades crumble. (Aug.) Forecast: Shamsie's cerebral, playful style sets her apart from most of her fellow subcontinental writers. Something of a cross between Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie, she deserves a larger readership in the U.S. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

In the billowing smoke of Karachi, where violence burns through this otherwise beautiful region of Pakistan, two friends are born destined to be together--a boy and a girl--a testament to the twist of fate that occurred when their parents chose to swap fiances and promptly marry. Practically raised as brother and sister, Karim and Raheen are acutely aware of the underlying sensuality in their relationship, unbeknownst to their parents, who are involved in a drama of their own doing. The bloodshed in Karachi concerns the families more than anything, and Karim's mother and father have decided to move to London to keep their son safe. Karim always told Raheen of his desire to make maps of Karachi; how there truly were no proper maps of their home, and she remembers him as the Kartographer as she learns to live without him. Shamsie portrays a modern-day romance in a war-ridden city, a sentimental example of how love continues to blossom in the rubble of a devastated land. --Elsa Gaztambide Copyright 2003 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

The splintering effects of an unbroken "cycle of violence, unemployment, divisiveness" in Pakistan enfold and alienate the protagonists of this intense third novel from the author of Salt and Saffron (2000). Narrator Raheen has grown up partially insulated from ethnic hatred in her native Karachi by her family's comparative affluence and as the soulmate of Karim, her best friend since they were infants. In an echo of their country's experience of Partition (from India in 1947), Raheen's and Karim's parents had made a "fiancÉe swap" in 1971 (the year of Bangladesh's creation). Thus are division and uncertainty built into the intimacy between Raheen and "Karimazov," as she playfully calls him, exercising the verbal wit (including desperately clever neologisms and anagrams) that typifies their not-quite-romantic friendship. In 1995, with Karachi again under siege, Karim's parents remove him to safety in London. Years pass, he and Raheen connect only through correspondence. His desire to establish control over the shifting world in which he does, and doesn't live increases his obsession with the certainties of "mapping" (i.e., "kartography"). And Raheen inquires of herself and others "why his mother broke off her engagement with my father"--gradually learning of the betrayals, lies, and secrets that simultaneously ensured their parents' survival and illuminated their self-destructive weaknesses. In its artful uncovering of how people hide from themselves and one another, Shamsie's tale partially echoes Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. But Kartography is oddly uninvolving, thanks to its narrative and thematic redundancy. Too many scenes and passages are too similar, and characters--several of whom (including, alas, Karim) remain undeveloped and indistinct--fail to fully engage our sympathies. Shamsie's stylish, energetic prose holds real promise for future books. Kartography, though, is a near-miss. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.