Book review: A God in Every Stone

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Book review: A God in Every Stone

British-Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie's empire-spanning novel A God in Every Stone is a moving epic of tragedy and redemption.

By Mary Paulose

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Published: Thu 3 Dec 2015, 11:00 PM

Last updated: Fri 4 Dec 2015, 1:00 AM

 A god in every stoneBy Kamila Shamsie
> 310 pages
> Published by Bloomsbury
> Available at Jashanmal
The best kind of reads are kaleidoscopic masterpieces, and this Orange Prize-shortlisted and Granta Best of Young British Novelist-prize winning work by Pakistani origin writer Kamila Shamsie is certainly one.
In 1914, just around the start of World War I, the soon-to-start quest of a young English upper class lady, Vivian Rose Spencer, to find her love and an archaeologically significant object, collides grandly with the world of a disgruntled but dignified Pathan soldier, Qayyum Gul, who is injured fighting for his British masters in the battle of Ypres. From London to Turkey and pre-Independence Peshawar - Pakistan had not yet to come into being - Vivian is fascinated with the past and her Turkish archaeologist mentor Tahsin Bey, and certain more ancient characters, while Qayyum faces an uncertain future. Both must make sense of where their loyalties take them, and weigh their actions in order to save the people they love, often with devastating consequences.
Over a 15-year arc, post-WWI and during the beginnings of the rebellion against colonial rule in the subcontinent, Vivian returns to a Peshawar of fermenting unrest, and the story soon flows into the events of bloodshed that characterised two tragic events of the 20th century - a massacre that was an early prelude to the end of British rule, and subsequently the brutal Partition of India, and a few countries away, one of the biggest genocides in history.
The historical facts surrounding the archaeological digs and details, and the events leading up to one of humankind's biggest ethnic cleansings can be confusing at times, but the book is a wonder of interweaving and coming together of lives, themes, and happenings.
The story tackles many issues - colonial attitudes to subjects, the contrast of cultural sensibilities, the rising role of women in public and professional life in the early 20th century, tribal pride and gender roles in a highly segregated society (".But this is Peshawar. Pathan men don't much like the idea of women." "Don't much like the idea of women doing what?" "Don't much like the idea of women."). Yet, Shamsie does it without taking sides or sounding patronising, in spite of a white lead character taking the helm. Maybe it's because the protagonist too is fighting to carve her own way in a man's world, but she understands the subjugated, even if they are on the other side of the divide. Here, there are parallels with the plot of Michael Ondaatje's brilliant The English Patient - the lives of a young Englishwoman and an Indian soldier becoming intertwined during the course of their own individual journeys.
The true delight to the reader lies in the easy unravelling of words by the author. One needs no "orientation" period to get into the narrative flow; Shamsie's language glides so evocatively, effortlessly, that you're immersed in the read, instead of checking how many pages are left. Small wonder she's bagged the literary awards.
I've always wanted to read Pakistani authors (Mohsin Hamid of The Reluctant Fundamentalist fame has long been on the list) and Shamsie's work is a great pick, if you want to start on subcontinental writing in English. Though it's a cliché accorded to many authors, Shamsie is indeed a master of her craft.
Like many of her contemporaries' works, her book is also a wonderfully-carved ode by the author to its setting: the old city of Peshawar, in this case. It's a whimsical musing of a time gone by, a pre-Partition era untouched by communal viciousness, when the lovely ruins and epochal history of the city was still valued, and as the author says, the people of this region had the vision to see the higher power in every stone.
marypaulose@khaleejtimes.com

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