Keen to learn more about inclusive workplaces? Want to be inclusive of the LGBTQ+ community? Learn more & request an invitation for a very special 2-hour session here!
Kamila Shamsie's new novel, A God In Every Stone, set in the Partition era has at its heart a quest for identity through archaeology.
Kamila Shamsie’s new novel, A God In Every Stone, set in the Partition era has at its heart a quest for identity through archaeology.
One hundred years after the greatest carnage in history, the extent of India’s losses in World War I have come to light. Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel, A God In Every Stone begins in 1914 with an archaeological dig in Turkey with the romantic Vivian Spencer, overwhelmed by history and Scylax, the man who travelled from Persia to Peshawar and was rewarded with a silver circlet by his Emperor Darius.
War separates Vivian from archaeology and from Tahsin Bey, who she loves despite the difference in their ages, and sends her nursing the wounded from battlefields like Ypres, shattered men and lives. Her life runs parallel to that of Qayyum Khan from Peshawar, who has lost his eye at Ypres and is freed from the battlefields to return home, filled with hatred for the British who will never regard people from the subcontinent as their equals.
Though it is a book about the East meets West complexities, E.M Forster taken to a different level, since the author is from the subcontinent – at the heart of the novel is a quest for identity through archaeology, a different, more erudite kind of cultural intermingling. Vivian travels to Peshawar in Syclax’s footsteps looking for the silver circlet which he lost somewhere on his voyage, hoping to retrace the happiness she lost in Turkey when the War began and plagued by guilt because she was inadvertently responsible for Tahsin Bey’s death.
With history filling her vision, she sees Qayyum on the train as a Greek hero of antiquity. Fate puts Qayyum’s young brother in her path and she transforms him into a classical scholar.
Shamsie’s portrayal of Vivian is in fact more vivid than that of Qayyum and his brother Najeeb, though it is interesting to see the Partition from the other side of the border through the actions of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi. Presumably, the London-returned Shamsie would find herself in a Vivian-like position in modern Pakistan. Barring Vivian, none of the women in the book make much of an impact – one flashes distraught green eyes in a quest for a sister lost in political carnage, but all the reader remembers are the green eyes and that is what the author obviously intends.
Shamsie’s work is filled with intricate detail, the balconies of the Street of the Storytellers for example, bouquets of peacocks that fascinate Vivian, and even the field of Ypres where Qayyum falls. The detail does threaten to obscure the story with its embroidery and Shamsie confessed to being relatively unfamiliar with Peshawar when she came to launch her book in Kolkata, which accounts for the depth of research that went into it.
Occasionally, her story telling too is as full of twists and turns as the streets of old Peshawar and sometimes proves to be fairly confusing, especially when she pulls a happy ending out of all the ancient stones and the bloodshed. However, A God in Every Stone has about it the character of a good old fashioned read, filled with nuanced language and breathless confrontations between past and present and East and West. Qayyum’s vision of the Emperor Ashoka throwing down his weapons on the fields of Ypres deserves mention as a moment where history and cultural memory unite.
Publisher: Bloomsbury India
Like Women’s Web and want to help us keep it awesome? Use our affiliate links below if you’d like to get a copy of Kamila Shamsie’s A God In Every Stone.
Women’s Web gets a small share of every purchase you make through these links, and every little helps us continue bringing you the reads you love!
At Flipkart
At Amazon India
At Amazon US
Guest Bloggers are those who want to share their ideas/experiences, but do not have a profile here. Write to us at [email protected] if you have a special situation (for e.g. want read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, indivisual posts do not necessarily represent the platofrom's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
But what if you could highlight the pleasure of eating a mango? Mango-eating has always been the stuff slurpy, sloppy moments are made of.
Someone once said, ‘A little coitus never hoitus.’ Or, as a passage from an ancient Indian text says, ‘The horse and mare, the bull and deer, form the high union, while the horse and deer form the highest union. On the female side, the elephant and bull, the mare and hare, form low unions, while…’
Apparently, the animals represent people who are trying to have a union, that is, sex. This passage shows how the ancient Indians knew a thing or two about the birds and the bees and the hares and the mares. We had passion or kaam. And we had the Kama Sutra.
Unlike the earlier WAGs, Ms Sharma was already a celebrity with a huge following, before she got hitched. Why should peeps question now, when she shared her thoughts about one of the toughest times of their life?
Behind every successful woman, there is a ‘Kaam Waali Bai’ and a ‘Calm Waale Spouse’.
Similarly, behind every successful married man, there is a fabulous understanding woman. She could be the warm cuddler, a fierce tigress or someone who will hold the mirror to show the true picture.
Two incidents in a span of just two days; Sydney & Peshawar leave all thoughtful parents with some hard questions to answer for their children.
Two Days, Two Cowardly Acts and important lessons learnt. The focal point of these acts was in two different cultures, two different countries, but the acts both left me shocked, angry. Let’s look at each one and what I learnt.
15th December 2014, Sydney Australia. A lone gunman hold a cafe hostage. At the end of the siege two people died, the gunman died. but humanity lived. Normal people taught us not to hate, with the #illridewithyou campaign. The gunman showed us what a single person’s rage can do, while the people of Australia showed us the true power of a community, a brotherhood. People who realised that religion does not determine how you react to situations, and the best answer to hate is love.
When I read the Mahabharata, this question came to me - what if the women had met together to have a discussion before war? With this, I came up with Mahabharatee - The five women who defined womanhood.
When I read the Mahabharata, this question came to me – what if the women had met together to have a discussion before war? With this, I came up with Mahabharatee – The five women who defined womanhood.
India is amazing country where great knowledge is articulated in a form of the simple stories. This is how our ancient literature has been kept alive for several thousand years with Shruti and Smruti – what is heard is remembered, and is being told and retold again and again. One of the most important among these is the Mahabharata – which has the miraculous structure of stories within a story.
As a child I’ve heard all these stories from my grandparents. As an adolescent girl I started thinking about those stories and then I started asking questions to my grandparents like – why did Draupadi leave her hair untied, why did Krishna not arrive in advance to stop the game of dice…so on and so forth. So for my next birthday my grandfather gifted me with a bunch of books on the Mahabharata.