Product Description

What is the moment, that exact moment when everything changes and the friends you have been, become the lovers you might be? Soul mates from birth Karim and Raheen finish one another's sentences, speak in anagrams and lie spine to spine as children. They are irrevocably bound to one another and to Karachi, Pakistan. 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, his need to name its streets 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #104242 in Books
• Published on: 2003-06-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Amazon.co.uk 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
"A boisterous tribute to her home town that crackles with the chaos of Pakistani political life' The Times 'Deftly woven, provocative blistering humour' Zoe Green, Observer Review 'She's our new multi-culti Nancy Mitford; a global girl who does love in both hot and cold climates She's great' Barbara Trapido

The Independent, October 12th 2002
"freshly written"

Customer Reviews

Mapping the boundaries of the human heart.
In this warm and complex study of friendship, love, and roots, Kamila Shamsie focuses on the interrelationships of a group of vividly realized, upper-class residents of Karachi, particularly Raheen and Karim and their friends, only thirteen years old as the novel opens. Raheen has always regarded Karim, her one-time crib-companion and blood-brother, as her best friend, someone who knows her so well he can complete her sentences. Their parents, too, are close friends, and as the story evolves, we learn that Raheen's father was once engaged to marry Karim's mother, and that Raheen's mother once pledged to marry Karim's father.

The story behind the exchange of fiancées, though revealed as an intimate personal story, has wider implications, since it is tied, obliquely, to the ethnic unrest of 1971, when civil war broke out between East and West Pakistan, and Bangladesh came into being. Unaware of the conflicts which occurred before they were born, the children are also unaware of the reasons for the fiancée-switch. It is only after they have grown up, attended college, and gained new perspectives that this mysterious situation begins to haunt them, influencing both their relationships with their parents and their unique and special relationship with each other.

Acutely sensitive to language and story, Raheen, now 23, is writing about her damaged relationship with Karim in an attempt to understand it. Straightforward and perceptive in her thinking and speech, she conjures up imagined conversations from the past with a deft, often humorous touch. Precocious, articulate, and somewhat rebellious as a child, she is, as an adult, somewhat detached and even blase about emotional issues, including the continuing violence in Karachi. Karim, on the other hand, demands accountability. He is a map-maker, accustomed to evaluating and correcting what he sees. Ultimately, the two must map the past in new ways, filling in the uncharted territories of their lives, and creating new boundaries and borders.

The emotional resonance of this novel is enhanced by strong subordinate characters. The parents of Raheen and Karim are insightfully drawn, and their story, as it unwinds, shows the fragility of relationships and the insidious prejudices that can creep into people's lives. As the exchange of fiancées is revealed through the eyes of the participants, the reader observes parallel events in the lives of Raheen, Karim, and their friends. Major themes are illuminated in the small details of everyday life, rather than in great historical moments. Through unique observations and insights into human character, this rich, thought-provoking novel creates maps of the human heart, ultimately achieving a universality and depth one does not often find in novels of personal relationships. Warm and human, this is a novel to love. Mary Whipple

A heavenly book
I am not going to try and write a clever review - I am lost for words. This is one of the most, if not THE most beautiful books I have ever read, and I read at least 10 books a month. I lost a weekend because I couldn't put it down. Such honest characters and such a fantastic story. I can't believe this is not a true life account - maybe it is? If not, then what a talented writer! I was lost in this story, and continued to think about it for long afterwards. Sad, funny, hopeful and inspiring.

You must read this book, and you must share it with others.

An enjoyable meditation on love, friendship & Karachi...
I bought this book whilst browsing through a bookstore trying to kill some time and as I began reading I was immediately hooked. I bought the book there and then and didn't stop reading it (more or less) until I had finished it. I found it a beautiful meditation on love and friendship and also a wry and penetrating analysis of the lives of Pakistani high society and also a poignant discussion of the role of the past in our lives in general and of Pakistan's troubled recent history (especially the secession of East Pakistan) in particular.

The main characters were all very realistically portrayed and interesting and the only qualm I would have is that no major character represented Pakistan's poor masses and burdened middle-classes although brief mentions of the effects of the violence in Karachi on these social classes occured but this was not explored sufficiently.

Still overall an excellent book and a great read. Ms. Shamsie is very gifted as a story teller and has a great command over words. The constant interjections of word-play were delightful.