An intense, empathetic, magisterial interpretation of clashing beliefs and entwined fates, in a harsh and ruined, yet lovely...
Afghanistan’s ancient culture is juxtaposed with its brutal recent political past in a fine novel by the Pakistani-born writer (Maps for Lost Lovers, 2005, etc.).
Complexity, beauty, violence and tragedy mark the pages of Aslam’s affecting story, which spirals out from the intricately muralled home of Marcus, an elderly English doctor living in Afghanistan. Marcus converted to Islam to marry his doctor wife Qatrina, but the Taliban stoned her to death after forcing her to cut off Marcus’s left hand and driving her mad. Their only child Zameen disappeared and Marcus’s quest ever since has been to find Zameen and her illegitimate son Bihzad. On a similar quest is Marcus’s Russian houseguest Lara, whose brother Benedikt was a soldier in the Soviet army in Afghanistan and who also disappeared. Zameen and Benedikt’s fates are in fact connected: Benedikt was Bihzad’s father. Additional layers of information surface via the involvement of David, a CIA agent who fell in love with Zameen and whose story exposes the role of local warlords, the American mindset and the United States’s complicity in the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. The book’s ever-reinterpreted narrative is full of blood and sorrow. Bihzad becomes a terrorist and is killed by a bomb he delivers. His trainer, madrassa-indoctrinated Casa, is later injured and tended by David and Marcus, which compromises and challenges Casa’s attitudes. Aslam’s efforts to unravel the knot of conflict are dreamy and eloquent, lit by poetic images—a buried Buddha, a compass made of blood—while he strives to maintain a scrupulously distanced perspective. Moments of over-earnestness and the story’s endless redefining of events do not negate its insight or somber impact. As the novel ends, cruelty, belief and warfare continue unceasingly.
An intense, empathetic, magisterial interpretation of clashing beliefs and entwined fates, in a harsh and ruined, yet lovely place.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-307-26842-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2008
A lyrical, urgent artistic response to a history that is still unfolding.
Searching novel of the Berlin refugee crisis by Erpenbeck, considered one of the foremost contemporary German writers.
“The best cure for love—as Ovid knew centuries ago—is work.” So thinks Richard, who, recently retired from a career as a classics professor, has little to do except ponder death and his own demise that will someday come. What, he wonders, will become of all his things, his carefully assembled library, his research notes and bric-a-brac? It’s definitely a First World problem, because, as Richard soon discovers, there’s a side of Berlin he hasn’t seen: the demimonde of refugees in a time when many are being denied asylum and being deported to their countries of origin. His interest awakens when he learns of a hunger strike being undertaken by 10 men who “want to support themselves by working” and become productive citizens of Germany. For Richard, the crisis prompts reflection on his nation’s past—and not just Germany, but the German Democratic Republic, East Germany, of which he had been a citizen (as had Erpenbeck). Richard plunges into the work of making a case for the men’s asylum, work that takes him into the twists and turns of humanitarian and political bureaucracy and forces him to reckon with a decidedly dark strain running through his compatriots (“Round up the boys and girls and send them back to where they came from, the voice of the people declares in the Internet forums”). Richard’s quest for meaning finds welcoming guides among young men moving forth from Syria, Ghana, Burkina Faso, some unable to read, one confessing that he has never sat in a cafe before, all needful strangers with names like Apollo, Rashid, and Osarobo. In the end, he learns from his experiences, and theirs, a lesson that has been building all his life: “that the things I can endure are only just the surface of what I can’t possibly endure.”
A lyrical, urgent artistic response to a history that is still unfolding.Pub Date: Sept. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8112-2594-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: July 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tantalizing, suggestive reconnaissance where the phantasma of other worlds—and private worlds—reveal a disconcerting...
Dr. Montague, an investigator of psychic disturbances, extends an invitation to three young people to join him at Hill House, whose tragic history has made it unfit for human habitation, and where perhaps they can intensify the forces at work.
Eleanor Vance, who had spent eleven years in caring for an invalid mother, is now alone in the world and unwanted—and she has had a poltergeist experience; Theodora is telepathic; and Luke Sanderson is the nephew of the present owner. During the days and nights to follow there are doors that close; drafts that chill; banging and scurrying noises—and writing on the walls. Mrs. Montague arrives—eager to launch a session with planchette and hoping for further materializations beyond these "decided manifestations." But Eleanor becomes increasingly disturbed and distraught; her hoped for close friendship with Theodora is brushed aside—as Theodora goes off alone with Luke; she is the most susceptible to the dark history of this house and attempts to imitate a tragedy in the past; and the story which begins as a spritely tour of the spirit world, ends on a note of real disequilibrium.
A tantalizing, suggestive reconnaissance where the phantasma of other worlds—and private worlds—reveal a disconcerting similarity, and Shirley Jackson's special following will find pause to wonder and admire.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 1959
ISBN: 0140071083
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1959
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