Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam in 5 Bullet Points


  • A beautifully written novel that verges on the poetic throughout - the intoxicating red of the Cinnabar moth; the magnetic luring of snow towards the earth...

  • Very well researched and damn good story - probably did take him the 11 years he claims to have required

  • Portrays a seismic point of contact between two very different traditions of the Subcontinental Islamic World - the traditional Muslim outlook and the disillusioned if not outright atheistic outlook

  • Highlights the unchallenged inconsistencies in people's thought

  • Describes a world (an anonymnous English town given the pseudonym of Dasht-e-Tanhaii - Desert of Solitude) that is simultaneously familiar yet totally foreign to me.
  • 2 comments:

    Anonymous said...

    Dasht-e-tanhai, the title of a famous poem by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which begins:

    "Dasht-e-tanhai mein ai jaan-e-jahaan larzaaN hain
    Teri awaaz ke saaye, teray hotoN ke saraab"

    The poem and a translation (in as much as Faiz can ever be translated), here:
    http://www.egothemag.com/urdupoetry/archives/2005/10/dashtetanhai.html

    Leo_Africanus said...

    A thousand camels for that man! (Mufti, not Faiz that is).