What is the moment, that exact moment when everything changes and the
friends you have been become the lovers you might be? Soulmates from
birth Karim and Raheen finish each other's sentences, speak in anagrams,
and lie spine to spine as children. They are irrevocably bound to each
other 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
this extraordinary novel, Kamila Shamsie shows us that whatever happens
in the world, we must never forget the complicated war in our own
hearts.
Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Pakistan. She is the author of five
novels: In the City by the Sea, Kartography (both shortlisted for
the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Salt and Saffron, Broken Verses and
Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize). In 1999 she
received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature and in 2004 the
Patras Bokhari Award--both awarded by the Pakistan Academy of Letters.
Kamila Shamsie lives in London.
