Customer Reviews

Kartography

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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

Goodness, I was SO emotionally invested in this book. It is narrated by a person whom I love so much...she is such a wonderfully TRUE character and I so ABSOLUTELY identify with her. Plus, the narrative style is so personable and delightful...it's a gorgeous story. The images of maps (duh! It's called Kartography...which I'm guessing is a combination of cartography and the fact that it is set in Karachi) and the way that residents of Karachi relate to space and place names...it's just BRILLIANT. These were some of the most accurately depicted 13 year olds I'd ever read, and their early twentysomething selves are equally true and satisfying. It was a bit amazing to me how much I could relate to them when I was fortunate enough to never have lived through all the civil war, violence and uprisings of Pakistan in the seventies, eighties and nineties, but that's part of what I love so much about this book...everyone is still human and has everyday mundane human moments, even when one's city is at war. Just, wow. This was the PERFECT book that came into my life at the perfect time. I read the entire thing in one day...almost. I read 10 pages the first night, half of it at work, and then I stayed up well past 1am finishing it (and weeping like a baby too. What an emotional ride, but I cherished it!!)

This novel is beautiful and very honest. God, I really identified with the narrator. You see friendships blossom and die and drift apart and change...it totally made me want to call all of my friends (especially those to whom I was close but haven't seen in awhile) but seeing how late it was when i finished reading, I refrained. *smile*

Normally, when I've read an AMAZING book I run around making everyone read it (Josephine Tey's "Daughter of Time" is a recent example) but while I needed to tell people about this one, I didn't want anyone else to read it just yet. Because if someone else were to read it and not love it, I thought it would break my heart. I've had a little more time to breathe now and am willing to loan my copy to friends now.

Plus, I knew little specifics on all the problems in Pakistan so this book was really informative, too.

Definitely made me wish I were better at anagrams!!

Kamila Shamsie's third novel, "Kartography" is an engaging, witty, yet strangely endearing story.
Raheen and Karim, members of Karachis elite privileged class, are soul mates from birth, but after Karims move abroad they somehow drift apart, yet hold onto memories forever. On his return, Raheen seeks to understand what possibly could have caused the divide between their hearts; Karim seems accusatory, speaks in a language she cannot understand, and is trying to tell her something that she does not know of. In between their complicated love and friendship, there are haunts of an earlier relationshop; Karims and Raheens parents were once engaged to each other, until "the music changed". Why this happened, and how it affected their childrens lives, Raheen asks and explores, until she is told the truth and her world and literally everything she stood for, collapses.

In the larger political and social backdrop is the Civil war between East and West Pakistan that divided the nation into two. This story, set in the later 80's and early 90s sees Karachi, their beloved city, torn apart by strife and violence. Should this affect their relationship? Raheen chooses to accept it while Karim feels the pain and demands Raheen to understand it in context.

Kamila Shamsie's writing is extremely engaging and humorous, with a shrewd understanding of society and people, at times; although she can be confusing and rewuire readers to read over to fully understand the meaning. Conversations don't always seem real; the characters speak in drawn out sentences and in a literary, philosophical manner, which can be annoying at times (nobody speaks in words like "palimpsest"). The book refers only to a very very minute selection of Karachi society, the extreme elite who live outside the circles that define mainstream Karachi.
However, despite the confusion and constant energy and action that can be taxing to your understanding of the plot and following of the story, Kartography is extremely enjoyable, overall very well written and astute. While not particularly deep, as novels go, its definitely worth its price.

Karim and Raheen have been the closest of friends since they shared a crib as infants. Growing up together in a wealthy Karachi neighborhood during the 1980s, they finish each other's sentences, speak in anagrams, dream each other's dreams and are true soulmates. The two are sure of the fact that, "If I wasn't me, you wouldn't be you." "Can angels lie spine to spine?" Raheen wonders to herself. "If not, how they must envy us humans."

Raheen's and Karim's parents were once engaged to each other: her father to his mother, his father to her mother. There is a long buried secret, a family mystery, behind the fiancee swap - one that threatens to sever the magical bond that unites these young people as they become adults.

Filled with wry humor and wit, this is a novel about a friendship predestined to turn into love. The metaphor of maps and identity is embodied by the character of Karim, who wants to be a mapmaker, obsessed with finding the roots and meaning of geographical belonging. However, the author Kamila Shamsie also writes about Pakistan, political violence, and growing up rich and comfortable in a land that is always on the edge of riot and despair.

Ms. Shamsie writes a lyrical, impassioned narrative, lush with detail. Her novel is a love song, of sorts, to Karachi. Set against the backdrop of Pakistan's bloody civil war, it is a story of a country at war and of hearts at war, where the intricacies of love and intimacy are deftly explored. A superb novel!
JANA

Kamila Shamsie, the author of Kartography, comes from a long line of distinguished writers. It is clear she has a knack for wordplay and was rasied in the cultural elite. Kartography is a book about many things: Karachi, the coming-of-age of a an girl who lives there, and the history and social aftermath of the Pakistani civil war. I found the book to be relatively competently written, seeing the relative youth of the author, though the plot tended to plod and the characters were not very sympathetic. I don't know if that was intentional, though I do see a postmodern attempt at lacking an authoritative moral voice. Though the author is to be commended on the preoccupation she has with the complicated nature of relationships, there seems to be a lack of real generosity between characters; most of them seem to be operating on self-centered ideologies or personal motivations which ultimately leads to a lot of broken relationships and families. We feel sympathetic for the circumstances of a number of different characters whose lives conflict due to how they feel about the past, the future, and how they relate to each other. But the characters are not heroic in even an every day sense. They are stuck in the ghosts of their pasts.

There is a lot of lack or resolution which is quite personally unsatisfying, because you feel that if the characters were not so egocentric they could resolve a lot of their bad blood and brooding. Not only is there a deterioration of a number of relationships, but the pretexts for these is somewhat unbelievable, being based on one-dimensional feuds relating to class and culture wars. I found a degree of social awkwardness in the protagonist and a concomitant naivete about human psychology that betrays the author's sheltered approach to the human condition and her adolescent idealism. In the end, I found the book to be personally valuable mostly insomuch as it revealed something about the nature of life in Karachi, a bustling, colorful patchwork of a city. Also, as the narrator and author are contemporaries of mine both chronologically and culturally, I found her condition of being on the verge of Pakistani and English/American culture to be relevant and interesting. I also learned something of the civil war and its effects on the Pakistani and Bengali psyche. Otherwise, not really a great piece of literature insofar as plot, characters, or writing style, though it has its moments. There is some good drama and a few good ideas, the best being the eponymous problem of how place simultaneously relates and segregates people, and how much of this is a figment of the imagination.

Children of destiny, Karim and Raheen grow up in the shadow of their parent's convoluted relationship. The parents have switched fiancés at the last minute, a fact that becomes part of family mythology. However, the swap has more serious implications, occurring during a period of civil unrest in Pakistan in the 1970's, where the upper class citizens of Karachi cannot escape the reach of the troubles. A decade later, still affected by the civil chaos that threatens the city, Karim's parents leave Karachi for London, where they eventually get divorced. Raheen loses her alter ego and best friend, writing only sporadically over the years.

Later, when Karim returns to Karachi, the two meet again, but their once easy relationship has become complicated by distance and family secrets. Neither can unravel the emotional knots created during the years they were separated. Raheen's nature is to cling desperately to her childhood memories, savoring the closeness she enjoyed with her best friend, although she is definitely in love with him. Karim has evolved into a principled man, a cartographer, whose world is defined in black and white, in absolutes.

Karim has long known the family secret; because of this, he judges Raheen for her complicity, although she has no knowledge of the event that occurred before they were born. In the bright idealism of youth, Karim's judgment comes easily, albeit flawed by his ignorance. Karim and Raheen have difficulty managing the complications of love, friendship and polarizing politics, their emotions as entangled as the love of their parents; only when they embrace the decisions faced by their parents can the young couple overcome their lack of communication.

This upper class Pakistani slice-of-life is set against a background of recurring civil war, beautifully illustrating the unbreakable bonds of love and friendship, made more durable by friendship. Shamsie's engaging prose evokes the warmth and acceptance of family, as the author connects politics with the everyday lives of the citizens of Karachi. Eventually, affluence is insufficient protection from the random violence of war and personal possessions cannot isolate these families from tragedy.

This is indeed a love story between a boy and a girl, but also an inter-generational one, where compassion defines the quality of family relationships. The extraordinary friendship of the parents, even with its inherent problems, teaches their children about the fragility of the human heart and the catharsis of forgiveness. Luan Gaines/2004.

Being born and raised in the USA, but keeping tight ties with my Lahori background from Pakistan keeps me on the lookout for novels that satisfy my thirst for cultural reads.

Kamila Shamsie's choice of words and phrases really makes this novel exquisite. The love story in the book between best friends from childhood was truly sweet. I felt myself ache for Raheen's misery. At the end of a letter Raheen wrote to Karim, she says "Come home, stranger. Come home, untangler of my thoughts. Come home and tell me, what do I do with this breaking heart of mine?" These words brought Karim home and when Raheen asked him about falling in love, he said "There was no falling. He (Karim) was born in love with her (Raheen), and he was borne by love all the way back to her..."

This book gave me a good deal of historical knowledge about Pakistan that I lacked. I knew about the war of 1971 where East and West Pakistan divide and Bangladesh was born. However, I didn't realize that this war made such an immense impact on the lives of people of East and West Pakistan.

I wasn't very happy with the way the author portrayed Pakistani culture. Granted, it was from a perspective of the elite and extremely modern society of Pakistan; which might I add is probably less than a few percent of the population. I was expecting to find more 'culture' in the book. I don't think drinking alcohol and swimming with the opposite sex demonstrate true Pakistani culture.

Had the perspective been from a more modest point of view, I would have enjoyed it more and perhaps found the story in one way or another related to many people I know in Pakistan. Many readers have thirst for tradition and culture when they read novels with international settings. When those novels are saturated with western traditions, this leaves the reader a little unsatisfied. I found myself constantly being annoyed with the characters ignorance towards religion, tradition, and culture.

This is one of the best novels I have read this year. The prose is exquisite, the pacing is wonderful - neither too fast nor too slow, and the characters spring to life and remain with you.

Beyond the themes others have discussed in their reviews, I think this novel illustrates beautifully how parents really know their offspring but offspring rarely fully understand their own parents as there are sides to our parents that we cannot possibly see precisely because we are their children.

I liked this and would love to read it again.

As to me - I read a lot of literature, not a lot of best sellers, and lots of fiction written by writers of Middle East origin and Asians and SouthEast Asians in particular because I like it. I am a fan of Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth and Ahdaf Soueif to give you an idea. If you like any of these writers or these types of books, then you will probably also like this book.

I have never finished a book in 2 1/2 days ever before. I was born in Karachi and must say I am biased but this book is fun yet intense. A love story set in a large urban not unlike any third world country with an educated population, which is yearning to leave it but can never forget it.

As soon as I began to read this book I was hooked! I loved how the book was very descriptive without being tedious, the four main characters are very likeable. The story is about the friendship between Raheen the narrator and Karim who seem destined soul mates even after Karim moves away and how they deal with being apart. Its also about the voilence in Karachi and how Raheen and her friends deal with it with the political troubles. I dont know if my review does this book justice but let me just say its a great book. Read it!