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Loading... Kartographypor Kamila Shamsie
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adorará Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se gostará deste livro. 1   bkwurm | Jan 9, 2009 |   sem resenhas | adicionar uma resenha
Amazon.com Amazon.com Review (ISBN 0747561508, Paperback)Kartography is Kamila Shamsie's impressive third novel. At its heart is a traditional love story-cum-family saga. Karim and Raheen are anagram-swapping "fated friends." Until the age of 13, when Karim moved to London, they were virtually raised as brother and sister. Their parents had once been engaged to each other. The unravelling of quite why this matrimonial square dance occurred is juxtaposed with Karim and Raheen's own, and decidedly more protracted, romance.As the title suggests, mapping--geographical, political and emotional--is central to the book. The "comic" spelling is a wry allusion to its setting: the troubled Pakistani city of Karachi, a place that, as Karim observes, worships "at the altar of K." Karim, Raheen and their friends Sonia and Zia all belong to the privileged Karachi elite. Born on the right "side of the Clifton Bridge" they seem immune from Karachi's endemic corruption, violence, and religious and ethnic intolerance but they and their families, like the rest of the city's inhabitants, have all been horrifically scarred by events of the 1971 civil war. Like Austen, or perhaps more accurately Forster, Shamsie is wonderfully adept at capturing the petty rivalries and social games of Pakistan's highly stratified bourgeoisie society--Zia's house is sagely described as "always full of people worth cultivating, rather than people worth having in your home." There are a few (well-acknowledged) nods to Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities and even Homer's Odyssey gets a look in but Shamsie wears her learning lightly. She manages to make Karim and Raheen's journey to toward engagement, both with the realities of Karachi and with each other, into a profound meditation on the nature of love, storytelling and politics. --Travis Elborough, Amazon.co.uk (retirado da Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:17 -0400) A primeira ronda de testes foi já encerrada. Visite o grupo Open Shelves Classification para mais informação. |
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The second time I read the book, I couldn’t let myself off so easily. I was curious about the war the characters kept referring to, and why there was tension between the Punjabi and Bengali characters. I picked up on some new subtleties, and was not so quick to skim over the unfamiliar references. I looked up the words I didn’t know, such as muhajir (immigrant) and Ami (Mother). But still I must admit that I didn’t probe too deeply into the history of the story or the region.
This time, however, in my third reading of this excellent novel, I can’t seem to get enough of the history of these characters that I have come to know as well as I know my own children. My atlas is permanently open on my living room floor as I look up cities and roads that figure in the story. I have Wikipedia’s explanation of the Bangladesh Liberation War bookmarked in my internet browser, as well as the history of the British colonization of India. And I must admit, I now appreciate the book on a whole new level. My understanding of the main characters has much more depth, and even peripheral characters have taken on an importance I would never have seen in my first or second readings. My historical research increases not only my appreciation of the book itself, but also my appreciation of the author’s storytelling abilities. As much as I loved the book before, I understood only a fraction of the thought and subtlety that must have gone into the creation of Kartography.
This book is a must-read, and a must-have in your library. (