a god in every stone thesis

Book review: A God in Every Stone - an unusual treasure hunt

Kamila Shamsie’s latest offering effortlessly straddles centuries.

COMMENTS (3)

@Islooboy: Haven't read the novel but " god in every stone" or in every thing, for that matter, is the foundation of mysticism.

A god in every stone? Isn't it a case of idolatory?

" A God in Every Stone " ?... Music to the ears of a Hindu ..

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The Literary Edit

Review: A God in Every Stone – Kamila Shamsie

Last night, on the eve of the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction’s winner’s announcement, I managed to finish the final of the six shortlisted books; Kamila Shamsie’s A God in Every Stone. When the shortlist was first announced back in April, the weeks ahead seemed like ample time to read the six contenders for the prize, but alas I found myself beginning Shamsie’s novel on Sunday evening and spending every spare moment I had desperately trying to finish it before tonight’s winner’s ceremony.

The novel opens in summer 1914 and follows Viv Spencer who travels to Peshawar at the time of the First World War, where she discovers the ancient history of Southern Turkey and falls in love with her mentor and family friend on an archaeological dig. When war flares up Viv returns to England to work as a nurse but still she dreams of pursuing her career as an archaeologist. What follows is an evocative tale fusing history and passion, conflict and friendship; that is as absorbing as it is thought-provoking.

Unlike other novels set around the time of WW1, A God in Every Stone looks at the impact and aftermath of the war beyond European territories – specifically at British-ruled India – giving readers an alternative perspective to history as we know it. No doubt a strong contender for tonight’s prize, there are just a matter of hours left before we find out which of the shortlisted authors will take the 2015 crown.

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Book Reviews

An heir to e.m. forster's vision in 'every stone'.

Alan Cheuse

A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie

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To put this book in any specific genre would be an injustice. A God in Every Stone is firstly a historical fiction, outlining lands long forgotten but legacies forever remembered. It gives the histories of Turkey and Pakistan but places them in the context of a World War I–stricken Europe. It is also a travel guide. It gives glimpses of Turkey, London, Pakistan, and all the lands in between, during and before the beginning of the twentieth century. Further, it is a romance novel, but not in the typical sense. Every phrase, line, and character carries with it a romantic ambience.

The story begins with young Englishwoman and archaeologist Vivian Rose Spencer. Through Vivian, we gain some sense of the romance present in ancient lands when great warriors gave glorious speeches and beautiful shrines were devoted to them. Vivian has gone on an archaeological dig in Turkey that changes her life. Forced to serve as a nurse for the army, Spencer quickly realizes her true calling is not in the hospital but in the dirt, digging for ancient artifacts that ring of stories from an ancient time. To pursue this dream, she goes on an adventure to find the ultimate dig site in Peshawar, Pakistan.

Vivian’s life in Pakistan quickly changes as she becomes a teacher and mentor to the young Najeeb Gul, brother of Lance Corporal Qayyum Gul, a wounded soldier whose bravery is revealed through his war narrative. Shamsie takes us through their separate lives and shows us how the beauty and cruelty of the world can exist side by side.

Shamsie combines the characters’ lives as the novel progresses in a way that leads to a heart-wrenching but never-clichéd climax. The theme of a loss of innocence is present in every character, but it is coupled with that of learning acceptance and humanity. Through her characters, Shamsie offers an inside look at cultural biases and uncontrollable tragedies but in the end reminds us to look deeper within the world, because no matter how hidden, there is a god in every stone.

Janny Gandhi University of Oklahoma

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LOCATION, MIGRATION AND SPACE IN KAMILA SHAMSIE'S A GOD IN EVERY STONE

Kamila Shamsie through her novel, A God in Every Stone (2014) makes her readers to traverse and witness the historical, geographical and cultural spaces and locations of various countries like ancient Caria, Persia, Turkey, London, France, Germany and Peshawar that too without moving their feet. Shamsie intertwines the migration with the history, culture, archaeology and war. Her characters represent nomadism. They move from one place to the other, from one nation to the other. The author develops the narrative with the itineraries of the characters. The shift in the narration from past to present also explicates theme of migration. Kamila relates migration with physical, psychological, cultural and historical space. The paper attempts to analyze the instances of migration, location, and space from A God in Every Stone.

Related papers

Kamila Shamsie's A God in Every Stone (2014) is one of the best examples of cultural chromatology that Kamila Shamsie, one of the reputed Pakistani writers brings to light through archeology and excavations. Shamsie uncovers the ancient Persian, Greek, Buddhist, Muslim and European cultures. Shamsie connects the cultural aspects with the history and migration. The author intertwines the story of archeologists and soldiers with the historical discoveries and happenings like the World War I and Freedom Fighting Movement of colonized India. Shamsie's characters are migratory subjects who experience multiple cultures of various nations and places. Shamsie pinpoints cultural multiplicity during the World War I. The paper is an attempt to analyze the cultural instances from A God in Every Stone. Shamsie uses narrates how an array of characters that represent various national identities, religions, attires, food and traditions as cultural markers who explicate culture and ethnicity of various nations and times. The author artistically pinpoints the uniqueness of every culture; and at the same time, she explicates the beauty of cultural amalgamation. Najeeb Gul, younger brother of Qayyum exemplifies the charm of the unification of the cultures.

Geocriticism is an emerging field in comparative literature which encourages scholars, critics, readers and geographers to think critically about space, place, location and human geography. It explores the multidisciplinary approches to analyze the relation and significance of the place and space in literature. The present paper attempts to scrutinize the construction of geocritical sapces in Jaishree Misra's semi-autographical novel, The Ancient Promises. Misra showcases how her female characters struggle to establish the various spaces to live their life in better way. Her female protagonists shift in a space to relocate themselves in the realms of social space. They are oppressed, suppressed and exploited under the parochial hegemony and dominant space of society. But, her women characters always struggle to find their own spaces while changing different geographical locations and boundaries in the highly discriminative world. The character in the novel, especially female characters raise their voices to occupy the various spaces while relocating themselves in the different places. They try to search their identity and space in the male dominating patriarchal space. Further, the analysis throws light on the problems that face by women characters while establishing their spaces because of the unhealthy traditions, rituals and customs of the society. Most of the women characters become the victim of subordination, supperession, subjugation and sence of unbelonginess in the patrirchal society.

Kamila Shamsie's novel, A God in Every Stone (2014) unearths the historical instances of Buddha from the time of Emperor Asoka till the excavation and preservation of statues and stupas in Peshawar Museum. Shamsie narrates a story that circles around the search for the Circlet of Scylax, the great explorer; its discovery by Najeeb and its sojourn with Buddhism. The author successfully intertwines archaeology, excavation, museum, statues of Buddha and stupas with the story of excavators, soldiers, freedom fighters and World War I. Kamila's characters, places and events penetrate the Buddhist virtues. The writer uses symbols like the Circlet of Scylax, the statues of Buddha, the Sacred Casket of Kanishka, and the Stupas of Asoka to take the readers towards the enlightened journey of historical instances. Kamila intertwines the story which symbolizes the quest and journey of the human towards the enlightenment. The paper is an effort to trace the instances of Buddha and enlightenment in Shamsie's, A God in Every Stone.

Naipaul’s empirical observations are not mere external impressions, they are the meditative impressions that has been craftily explored, pondered and created to recreate his imaginative features into personal and universal overtones. His travel writings are indeed the pieces of his cumulative conscience who tries to perceive the reality in the context of local socio-cultural norms, and the same he has expostulated to comprehend and construct a parallel paradigm in the forces that constitute the homogeneity as well as the hegemony of cultural relativism not only in his own psyche but also in the mankind in general. This paper proposes to examine certain issues that determine Naipaul’s capacity to find socially acceptable outlet, which subsequently assumes a substitute expression for his displacement and sublimation. It is found that Naipaul seems to be very sensitive to explain the religious and social norms and attributes influencing the psychology and physiological variables of different communities. His Travelogues: An Area of Darkness; India: A Wounded Civilization; India: A Million Mutinies Now; Among the Believers- An Islamic Journey; The Middle Passage- A Caribbean Journey; The Loss Of EL Dorado- A Colonial History etc. have been dealt empathetically to investigate the conflicts, coercion, prejudices, misrepresentations, misperception and misconception of ethics and the dynamics of attitude change on account of the perceptual selection, perceptual defense and perceptual development of the religious orientations and manifestations in day to day socio-cultural aspects of the life of the communities in the world. Last of all the aim of this study is to explore disillusions and developments in cultural relativism and to imply the paradigm shift in the Naipaul’s own perception that gradually not only illumines him but also leads him to self-actualization. Naipaul does not seem to depict communal polarization in his travel writings, rather he subjectively puts forth the ignorance, the degeneration and hegemony of particular section over other and that disparity that continues to exist generation after generation whether by the Western imperialism, or by believers during Khomeini’s tyranny in Iran or by the imperialistic nature of sub-continent communal- caste groups that have tried to subjugate the other in the name of religious mission or political orientation.

This paper analyzes and compares different patterns of homecoming in various pieces of ancient and medieval Near Eastern literature. Examples are given where the person ending either a real or a mystical journey ends his voyage first, by reaching a state of inner peace and balance, second, where the journey ends tragically by a suicide or a permanent mental exile and finally, where the outcome may be positive for the traveler and his community. 1) The first example comes from the Babylonian Gilgameš Epic, Tablet X, where the hero, Gilgameš, at the end of his quest for immortality finally reaches an inner equilibrium realizing that this earthly life is incompatible with immortality. 2) The second example comes from the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ḥagigah 14b, about the visionary travel of four Rabbis and the four different ways in which they end their exploratory inner journey. 3) Finally, the third example comes from medieval Sufi tradition. The article suggests that the “Elijah posture” of putting the head between the knees (1 Kgs 18:42), which is also the standard prayer posture among Sufi masters is traditional in the ancient Near East and attested since the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE. This is the posture Gilgamesh adopts five times prior to his travel wanting to know the outcome of his journey in the Assyrian as well as in the Hittite cuneiform tablets of the Gilgameš Epic. The Sufi masters might have simply adopted and used a traditional Mesopotamian posture. On this particular point, there is no need to postulate any direct Hebrew or Jewish influence from the rabbinic academies in medieval Iraq. The mystic travel of the four rabbis into pardes “Paradise” in Ḥagigah 14b, is interpreted as a Jewish polemic against Judeo-Christians who “mutilated the shoots,” i.e. became apostates from the point of view of the Pharisees.

Against Ghassan Hage's theorization of migration " guilt " —the view that migration entails a sense of rupture, animating an unfulfilled desire to recapture a lost, imaginary, subjective wholeness—this article explores the conjunctures of migration and religious pilgrimage in the creation of new, transcendent moral subjectivities away from " home. " Taking four case studies—Christian Filipino migrants working in Israel, Muslim Pakistani immigrants to the United Kingdom, Indian Jewish Bene Israel immigrants to Zion, and Hadramati Sufi itinerant migrants across the Indian Ocean—we reflect on a central theme animating the theorization of religion and diaspora: that of movement away from home as religious and moral exile, and the sense of subjective alienation and yearning it entails. By going on pilgrimage , we show, migrants deny the rupture migration has entailed, creating their own sacred geographies that recapture and renew an imaginary wholeness. They redefine their sufferings, hard labor, and difficult living conditions as a religious sacrifice or sacred journey, imbuing the act of abandoning a former home or homeland and its familiar surroundings with ethical meaning. By becoming pilgrims, migrants of diverse origins travel across international borders while extending trans-local pilgrimage cults as they migrate internationally. Migration and pilgrimage are thus, we argue, mutually reconfigured as embodied and subjectively transformative forms of movement.

Migration and exile are human tragedies that cannot be characterized. Since the beginning of time, the world is the scene of these tragedies. Migration is a mostly conscious, sometimes forced movement to a new life which aims to have better life conditions and styles. However exile is leaving a habitual, accepted life style usually under pressure and being sent away by force. Migration sometimes involves free will and desire; people are ready to a transition. However in exile, enforcement stands in the forefront; everything happens out of free will. In migration, there is a target to a better life or at least there is hope. On the other hand in exile, there is moving away of experiences, there is hopelessness and resentment.

International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2009

SHODH SANCHAR BULLETIN Vol. 10, Issue 39, July-September 2020, 2020

The Circle of Karma by Kunzang Choden, a Bhutani writer is the first English novel that narrates the life story of Tsomo, an uneducated woman who goes through turmoil and hardships, multiple journeys, nomadism, loneliness and pilgrimage. The novel chronicles the life and struggle of Tsomo till her seventies, with Buddhist philosophy, Buddhist way of life, predestination and karma that throws light upon religiosity, beliefs, superstitions, traditions, multiple migrations, spaces, places, locations, nomadism and the resultant loneliness of characters in the novel. The present paper attempts to trace migration, nomadism and loneliness of Tsomo, who undergoes a marathon of spaces, places, hardships, illness and dejection. She migrates alone and sometimes with a company of migrants to an array of places and spaces. As her marriage goes for a toss, she embraces independence and nomadism wherein she keeps on moving from place to place and from a Buddhist chorten to another and from a pilgrim place to the other. Her ultimate aim is to become a nun and dedicate her life in chanting prayers and pilgrimage. Her multiple journeys and loneliness teach her peace and solace beyond physical identity and human ego. Tsomo's migration is from a small village of Wangleng to the sublimity of Goutam Buddha. The novel portrays migration, nomadism and loneliness of Tsomo on her way to religious attainment, peace and solace. Tsomo frees herself from the age-old stereotype role of a woman and rises as a sublime figure like Buddha. Keywords : Migration, journey, loneliness, nomad, pilgrim.

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Book review: A God In Every Stone By Kamila Shamsie

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It is a rare writer who can transport her readers in just a few pages to another place and time. Shamsie’s writing is so evocative that she does just that. In this work she contrasts three different empires: the ancient Persians between 515 and 485 BCE, the dissolution of the Ottoman state, and the decline of British colonial rule in India. Spanning two continents and two defining events in the early part of the 20th century, the novel brilliantly illustrates how war tests loyalties and destroys empires.

This absorbing, multi-layered novel begins in July 1914. A young Englishwoman, Vivian Spencer, joins the Turkish archaeologist Tahsin Bey at a dig in Labraunda in Turkey. Tahsin, a friend of her father’s, has known Vivian since she was a child when he used to regale her with stories of Scylax and his betrayal of Darius, the Emperor of Persia. Scylax was instructed to trace the course of the Indus River and his journey started in Caspatyrus, now Peshawar. In Shamsie’s version, Darius gave his subject a silver circlet as a token of his esteem. When Scylax’s people, the Carians, rebelled against the Persians 20 years later, Scylax sided with his countrymen. The circlet disappeared and its rediscovery has become Tahsin’s Holy Grail. Vivian shares his passion for artefacts and their friendship swiftly turns to a love that is abruptly curtailed by the First World War.

After returning to London, Vivian serves as a VAD while Tahsin continues his archaeological work. He sends her family a postcard in which he mentions that he longs to go to Peshawar to see “the sacred casket of Kanishka”. Believing that Tahsin is encouraging her to escape the war in this “refuge amidst antiquity”, Vivian persuades her family to allow her to travel there. At the same time, Qayyum, a Pashtun soldier, is returning from Europe to his native city. He had served with the 40th Pathans on the Western Front and witnessed unspeakable horrors. Discharged after losing an eye at Ypres, Qayyum is heading home to an uncertain future.

Once in Peshawar, Viv befriends Najeeb, a young boy she meets at the station who, she later discovers, is Qayyum’s brother. He is hungry for knowledge and she nicknames him “the Herodotus of Peshawar” while teaching him about the history of the region, past excavations and travellers in antiquity. Before long, Najeeb is dreaming of a career as national assistant in the local museum. Vivian feels an affinity with ancient Peshawar, once a Buddhist kingdom: “Everywhere a traveller looked there was the Buddha, carved over and over into and around the countryside, in an age when the people of this region had the vision to find the god in every stone.” In Peshawar she also feels connected to Tahsin, to whom she writes every week, but she never hears back from him. It is only when Vivian returns to London that she hears of his fate.

Blending fact and fiction, Shamsie has Qayyum become involved with Ghaffar Khan, an independence activist known for his non-violent opposition to the British Raj. The second part of her carefully structured novel takes place 15 years later in Peshawar. Najeeb, now Indian assistant at the museum, persuades Vivian, a senior lecturer at the University of London, to return and fund the excavation of a site where he believes Scylax’s circlet is buried.

The region is in ferment and on the brink of change. Once again a reunion is thwarted because of conflict. This time it is the British government’s brutal suppression of unarmed demonstrators. The massacre in the Street of Storytellers on 23 April 1930 proved pivotal in the non-violent struggle to drive the British out of the Indian subcontinent.

In an end note, Shamsie observes that the British estimated the death toll to be 30 while the local Congress claimed it was as many as 125. The atrocities are vividly portrayed by Shamsie and a potent reminder of the bloodshed of more recent revolutions. When it comes to empires, Shamsie suggests, history often repeats itself.

There is an epic quality to A God in Every Stone. Shamsie begins with a love story, and encompasses a variety of subjects including war, colonialism, nationalism, gender and archaeology without ever being didactic. Vivian’s distaste for the burka, for example, is revealed through well-placed irony when she is forced to disguise her Britishness: “Viv was able to consider the burka as the invisibility cape she had longed for as a child. Beneath the white tent she moved in an entirely private sphere. Unknown, unseen.”

Shamsie is adept at excavating the past and braids the personal and political to great effect. All the while she builds tension and keeps us guessing about the fate of her characters. The end result is both complex and spell-binding.

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Kamila Shamsie, ” A God in Every Stone”

A God in Every Stone  will be classified as “Pakistani Literature”. It may have been written by Kamila Shamsie but it could even work as literature of the subcontinent or South Asian literature, with sufficient sprinkling of historical facts that makes it intriguing and interesting for a global audience. It is so clearly positioned in a time of history that it is sufficiently far removed from the present times for the writer to be able to present, analyse, teach and comment–uninhibited. Placing the story during World War 1 and in undivided India is fascinating. It is a story based on some historical facts like the massacre of Qissa Khawani Bazaar (the Storytellers Market) on 23 April 1930, the Khudai Khidmatgars and of the freedom fighter, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan. More importantly I liked the placing of it in a time of history when people of undivided India are shown fighting together against the British. ( In this telling of history/fiction, it is immaterial whether they were Pakistanis or Indians, they are fighting against the colonial rulers.) It is as if the novel is showing a “history from below” much like Subaltern Studies did in academics. For instance giving characters such as Najeeb, the assistant at the Peshawar museum; the soldiers hired by the British to figure in the Great War such as Lance-Naik Qayyum Gul; the young prostitutes–girls of mixed lineage; the storytellers; the letter-writer — are people who would barely have figured in previous fictional narratives.

It is a story set so firmly in the city of Peshawar, but makes the wonderful connect of this region with Greece, the rich history of Peshawar and Gandhara art. The forays into Europe of World War 1, the “betrayal” of Tahsin Bey by Viv, the recuperation of soldiers of Indian origin in Brighton, the VAD etc. Even the subtle transformation of Viv’s mother from being horrified by her daughter dispatched to an archaeological dig in Turkey to encouraging her to make a trip to Peshawar. ( ” The truth was, the war had sloughed off so many rules that no one seemed to know any more what counted as unacceptable behaviour in women.” p.75)

Positioning the story in Peshawar is stunning since much of the problems of early twentieth century such as tribal warfare, being a part of NWFP, Swat valley continue to be relevant in the twenty-first century. What also shines through in the novel is that this region has been alive, settled and of crucial geo-political significance for centuries, something that locals tend to forget or maybe are too absorbed in their daily life. What comes through in the novel is that the locals may be active participants ( willing or unwilling is not the question right now) but local dynamics have a powerful impact on their lives. This is evident through the fascinating badalas that are shared. Of these the one that attracts the most crowd is that of the Haji. Well it could be just a comment of the times but it assumes a different dimension if read with a knowledge of what is happening today in world politics –the Islamisation of Terror.

Even the descriptions of the Gandhara artifacts, the archaeological digs etc criss-cross history marvelously. They bring to play not only the political significance of important regimes of the past such as Darius, the Mauryan empire, Alexander etc but of more recent developments such as what is happening in Afghanistan and the Taliban ( i.e. blasting of the Bamiyan Buddhas). But the inextricable link between culture/cultural expressions and politics. The politicians and kingmakers may no longer be alive but their presence is marked by sculptures, pottery shards, etc that have been left behind or excavated. The connection between Gandhara and non-violence is also striking when one recalls that Ashoka who quit fighting after the battle of Kalinga, became a Buddhist and a staunch believer of non-violence, his first “posting” was at Gandhara. Whereas this novel involves Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who too believed in non-violent forms of action. Centuries apart sharing similar beliefs in the same region.

The flitting between the imagined and real worlds. Creating the myth of circlet of Scylax so convincingly could only have been done by a person who is passionate  about Greek mythology and loves research. It meshes beautifully in this story.

A God in Every Stone  is exquisite. With this novel Kamila Shamsie has set a very high benchmark for literary fiction–worldwide.

                                     ***** ( After reading  A God in Every Stone  I posed some questions to Kamila Shamsie via e-mail. )

Q1 Have the film rights been sold to this book? Who chose the extract for the Granta special? No. And I chose the extract.

Q2 How did do you decide upon this story?

I didn’t. I had decided on a very different story which started with the massacre in Qissa Khwani/the Street of Storytellers in 1930 and continues until 2009. But my plans for novels always end up going astray. It did have both archaeology and the anti-colonial resistance in Peshawar as elements right from the start so the germ of the novel was always there but finding the story was a slow winding process which involved lots of deleting and quite a bit of re-writing.

Q3 Where was the research for this book done?

Mostly in the British Library where they keep colonial records – and also have a wonderful photography collection. I also went to some of the novel’s locations in Peshawar. And the Internet is an invaluable tool for research, of course.

Q4 How did the idea of a woman archaeologist,  Vivian Rose Spencer, strike you? I wish she had more of a presence in the book.

The idea of an English archaeologist struck me first – originally the archaeologist was going to be male but while reading a piece of travel writing by the Englishwoman Rosita Forbes who was in Peshawar in the 30’s I became interested in the experience of Englishwoman in Peshawar. At that point the structure of the novel was very different and there were more primary characters. I’m pretty sure that, regardless of Rosita Forbes, I would have made the archaeologist female once it became clear that the soldier and archaeologist were the two primary characters. I wasn’t about to write a novel in which both the main characters are male. Male writers do more than enough of that!

As for wanting her to be more of a presence – she has more pages in the novel then anyone else. But her story is more the focus of the first half of the book. The anti-colonial story has to shift it’s focus to the Peshawaris.

Q5 How much history did you delve into? Did the historical research come before the writing or specific research happened after the story took root?

Lots. And lots. I research and write as parallel processes – and the research doesn’t really stop until I’ve finished the book.

Q6 This is literary fiction similar to what Subaltern Studies is in academics–telling the histories from “below”. You made heroes of figures who were considered rebels in “mainstream” narratives. Did this happen consciously?

Whose mainstream?, would be my first response to that. What I am interested in, which relates to your question, is the stories that have received less attention than other stories. Whether it’s women archaeologists rather than men archaeologists, Indian soldiers in WWI rather than English soldiers, the non-violent Pashtun rather than the one who picks up a gun.

Q7 What is the difference between literary fiction, historical fiction and fiction set in history?  Would   A God in Every Stone even fit into any of these categories?

It’s not something to which I give any thought when writing a novel. Which category will make people want to read it?

Q8  There are many women characters in your novel, who only serve purpose for that particular moment in the story, no more. Yet their fleeting appearances are powerful, almost like a painting, they leave a deep imprint on one’s mind. For instance the infant bride and the teenage prostitute, are they figments of imagination or based upon sketches that you came across?

I certainly see then serving a purpose beyond a single moment. Everything in a novel has to serve the entire novel. (The infant bride grows up to be a very important part of the novel – she’s the green-eyed woman.) They aren’t based on sketches. I know there were prostitutes in the Old City and I know very young girls were given away in marriage. Beyond that, I worked out the particular stories that best suited my purpose.

Q9 Why did you choose to write about Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan or “Frontier Gandhi” ?

I grew up barely even hearing his name which is why I wanted to write about him. He’s been written out of Pakistan’s history, except in KP, which is a terrible shame. Also, he was such an important figure in his own right that it seems only correct that we should call him by his own name or honorific – Ghaffar Khan or Bacha Khan – rather than by reference to anyone else, regardless of who that anyone else is.

Q10 Are the badalas yours or recorded?

Q11 Have you ever worn a burqa. The confusion that you show the young girl to be in can only come from an experienced moment.

No I haven’t. Novelists imaginations fortunately often thrive quite happily without experienced moments!

Q12 Now that you have British citizenship, how do you see yourself? British-Pakistani writer, Pakistani writer, of South Asian origin?

Pakistani. I’ve only been British for 6 months!

13 April 2014

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A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie – review

Kamila Shamsie 's new novel deals with vast sweeps of history. Within its 300 pages, a story unfolds that covers the travels of the fifth-century BCE explorer Scylax, working on behalf of the Persian king Darius I; an attempt by early 20th-century archaeologists to recover the circlet worn by Scylax; the outbreak of the first world war; the experiences of Indian Army troops on the western front and later as injured servicemen in Brighton hospitals; the rise of the non-violent independence movement in Peshawar and the bloody killing of non-violent protesters by the British Army in 1930, in Peshawar's Qissa Khwani Bazaar .

The story follows a young Londoner, Vivian Rose Spencer, from an archaeological dig in Turkey back to Britain where she works as a Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse during the first world war. After a crucial betrayal, she travels on to Peshawar. At the same time, the Pashtun soldier Qayyum Gul goes to Flanders with the 40th Pathans, who fought heroically and suffered devastating casualties during the second battle of Ypres in April 1915. Wounded, Qayyum is treated in Brighton before returning home to Peshawar to wrestle with his injuries and changed loyalties. Qayyum's brilliant younger brother, Najeeb, completes the circle by becoming Vivian's pupil, and later an archaeologist and "campaigner for the freedom from Empire for the peoples of India and Britain". On its way, A God in Every Stone takes in British women's battle for suffrage and the prelude to the Armenian genocide.

A novel that successfully connects and brings to life such a mass of material must be exceptionally brilliant, and possibly quite long. A God in Every Stone is an ambitious piece of work, and its pages are lit by Shamsie's eloquent prose. Her feeling for place is sensitive and sometimes exquisite. The flowering orchards of Peshawar are as vivid as the blood hosed by firemen from the streets of Qissa Khwani Bazaar.

However, when it comes to character and event, it is often easier to see what Shamsie is aiming at than to feel the arrows of her intentions hitting their target. At times the novel makes gestures towards key moments of history rather than creating an imaginative embodiment of these events. The texture of VAD nurses' lives during the first world war has been viscerally conveyed by writers such as Irene Rathbone and Vera Brittain. Shamsie presents Vivian as a VAD, but her hospital experiences are too stereotyped to be convincing. The arrival of the 40th Pathans in France and their experiences in the trenches also need more heft. This is not just a matter of detail, but of closeness to the fictional individual. Mulk Raj Anand's Across the Black Waters , for example, immerses the reader in the jagged observations, bewilderment, questioning and excitement of Lalu and the other sepoys as their ship docks and they prepare to travel to the front. Through such precision, the particular truly acquires a universal reach.

There are some minor errors. The name of the historical figure Captain JFC Dalmahoy, who died leading his company of the 40th Pathans on 26 April 1915, is spelled in two different ways in the novel. Both are incorrect. The first line of Paul Rubens' recruiting song "Your King and Country Want You" is misquoted. These small points are worth putting right, because in a novel with such a wide range, the reader must trust the writer's research.

A God in Every Stone deals with many histories. Its most moving aspect is the way Shamsie shows the depth and subtlety of the bonds between Pashtun men – at home in Peshawar, at war in Flanders and during the struggle for Indian independence. These men, who are brothers, cousins or friends from childhood, show one another a ferocious loyalty. There is tenderness, humour and playfulness between them, and their maleness is confirmed in the public square and public discourse. Qayyum and Najeeb epitomise the intensity of such love, which may, at times, be all that is left to them.

The parts of A God in Every Stone have not quite become a whole; the task is too great. However, Shamsie's passionate curiosity about how empires grow, collapse and die makes this a novel well worth reading.

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A God in Every Stone

Written by Kamila Shamsie Review by Kristina Blank Makansi

While working on a dig in Turkey with a family friend, Vivian Rose Spencer, a young Englishwoman, falls in love with both archaeology and the archaeologist, Tahsin Bey. When World War I interrupts their plans, Vivian returns home and works as a nurse, always hoping to hear something from Tahsin and to someday join him to search for circlet of Scylax in Peshawar. Eventually she goes to India on her own and meets Najeeb, a little boy sent to the train to meet his brother returning home from fighting for the British. His brother, Qayyum, a lance corporal, has come to question his loyalty to the crown and to resent the British on whose behalf so many of his friends fought and died and for whom he lost an eye. Unbeknownst to Qayyum or the rest of his family, Vivian takes Najeeb under her wing and tutors him, awakening a passion for the past that Qayyum does not understand. Eventually Vivian returns to England, Qayyum joins the movement for non-violent revolution, and Najeeb goes to university to become an archaeologist, obsessed with Vivian’s story of Scylax and the silver circlet. Years later, Vivian returns at Najeeb’s request, and the three are caught up in a whirlwind of revolutionary fervor that changes their lives forever.

Although there are flashes of brilliance, especially at the very end, A God in Every Stone was ultimately disappointing. With archaeology, romance, and revolution, I so wanted to love it, but the writing too often fell short, almost as if it was a shadow of what it was meant to be. The last section, “On the Street of Storytellers,” did much to redeem it, though, and the very last chapter, “485 BC,” is truly inspired.

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A God in Every Stone Kindle Edition

• Print length 321 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date April 10, 2014
• File size 1609 KB
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• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00IUMSSPE
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing; 1st edition (April 10, 2014)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 10, 2014
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 1609 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
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• Print length ‏ : ‎ 321 pages
• #598 in Historical Asian Fiction
• #2,201 in British & Irish Literary Fiction
• #4,076 in Historical British Fiction

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Kamila shamsie.

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Customers find the characters interesting and the positioning of them to represent different cultures. They appreciate the historical sweep of the work, intelligence, and lyricism. However, some feel the story doesn't make much sense until about 3/4 through.

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Customers find the characters interesting and the positioning of them to represent different aspects.

"...it was a refreshing reminder than excellence can also come from great characters and a good plot. For myself, I can’t wait to read another Shamsie." Read more

"...I liked the time period of the book and felt that the characters were interesting , the narration was a distraction and ultimately left me not able..." Read more

"...recovery of neglected participants in World War I, and its positioning of characters to represent different perspectives on the colonial politics..." Read more

" Excellent character study ..." Read more

Customers find the book's historical sweep and well-seasoned outlook to be wonderful. They also appreciate the archaeology sites and stories about the culture.

"What a read. Wonderful research and well seasoned outlook ." Read more

"The historical sweep of this work , its recovery of neglected participants in World War I, and its positioning of characters to represent different..." Read more

"...I especially loved the archaeology sites and stories about the culture." Read more

"A must read for a historical novel ...." Read more

Customers find the book incredibly intelligent and interesting. They also say the author understands people well.

"This book is incredibly intelligent because Shamsie understands people and she understands history...." Read more

"What a read. Wonderful research and well seasoned outlook." Read more

" Very interesting but the ending was a let down." Read more

" well researched and well written book" Read more

Customers find the book lyrical, evocative, and rich. They also say it operates on many levels.

"This is a rich and keenly observed novel which operates on many levels: as a tale of World War I; of the fading Ottoman Empire; of early struggles..." Read more

"Kamila Shamsie has done it again. A lyrical masterpiece . I wish I hadn't finished it so quickly!" Read more

"Excellent. Very evocative ." Read more

Customers find the narrative quality of the book to be poor. They say the story doesn't make much sense until about 3/4 through, and the ending is fanciful and convoluted. Readers also mention the plot is artificial and not memorable.

"...Peshawar comes alive with the Street of Storytellers etc. ending is a bit fanciful and convoluted and takes away from an otherwise enjoyable read" Read more

"Not a bad book, but not memorable , either." Read more

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Book Review | A God in Every Stone

Combining suspense and scholarship, the author's new novel stands out for its engaging storytelling.

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• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing India Private Limited (1 January 2014)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9382951512
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-9382951513
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 570 g
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 20.3 x 25.4 x 4.7 cm
• Net Quantity ‏ : ‎ 1.00 count
• #44,194 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

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