- Hardcover: 343 pages
- Publisher: Oxford University Press (January 2002)
- ISBN-10: 0195798333
- ISBN-13: 978-0195798333
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Kartography is Kamila Shamsie's impressive third novel. At its heart is rather 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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
From Publishers Weekly
The trauma of war is typically gauged by loss of lives and property, not broken hearts, but the microcosm is often as powerful an indicator of loss as the macrocosm-or so Shamsie seems to say in her latest novel, a shimmering, quick-witted lament and love story. Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, is a place under constant siege: ethnic, factional, sectarian and simply random acts of violence are the order of the day. This violence-and the lingering legacy of the civil war of 1971-is the backdrop for the story of Raheen and Karim, a girl and boy raised together in the 1970s and '80s, whose lives are shattered when a family secret is revealed. The two friends and their families are members of the city's wealthy elite, personified in its shallowness by family members like Raheen's supercilious Aunt Runty and in guilty social conscience by Karim himself. This is a complex novel, deftly executed and rich in emotional coloratura and wordplay (the title is inspired by Karim's burgeoning obsession with mapmaking, and spelled with a "k" after the city's name). Shamsie pays homage to Calvino with a pastiche of Invisible Cities written by Raheen at her upstate New York college. But Shamsie's novel deals more with ghosts than cities: ghosts of relationships, ghosts of childhood, ghosts of love. A ghost is said to haunt a tree where Raheen's father-once engaged to Karim's mother-carved their initials long ago. Two ghosts representing Karim and Raheen walk an invisible city in Raheen's Calvino tribute. As someone said to Raheen: "There's a ghost of a dream you don't even try to shake free of because you're too in love with the way she haunts you." In similar fashion, Raheen remains in love with Karachi, family and friends, even as one by one their facades crumble.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
an adolscent luv story,
By Ani (MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kartography (Hardcover)
a recommendation on a discussin forum, brought my attention to his piece, and I kept postpoing it. My first attempt at kartography , got it from my library 2 weeks, a 14 day book. Started out dry in the begging, with Karim and Raheen two kids, aged 14, go for holidays to Aunt Laila's farm. They both of them have an epiphany they aren't clear about. karim a Bengali, decides to overlook, either having an inkling of the facts wheras Raheen is curious, asks her uncle until a fight one day, makes her decide she is never going to enquire on the topic again.As to how detrimental it is to have dead secrets buried, more so for the secrets to remain buried, shows up a decade, there's more buried under, thatz been blocked out, and one fine day the truth is out in the open and a shocker, as to why Karim and Raheen could never become one, inspite of their undying love for each other. The book starts out at an excellent pace after Raheen's grown up and studying in NY, and they show her reading that romantic stuff, from that part on, I couldn't stop reading , till I finished. It was such an enjoyable read. And towards the end She really messed it up like in the beginning where it's all about tying loose end. I had to read the parental generation story twice or thrice before I understood the gist of what happened. Karim and Raheen once grown up , was the wonderful part to read. All those child - age realizations didn't really impress me. Worth a read, once wish there was more of spice. more of a tale, and really there were more personal rants, with the story being narrated in backdrops.. specially the partition scene made a comeback for a very brief period of time. .. But I guess it could have been edited a lot more, most of those adolescent scenes could have been dropped in order to make way for an impressive romance between Karim and Raheen. I kept waiting for more, and more.. and well.. it was disappointing..
3.0 out of 5 stars
An adolscent love, strengthened by age.,
By Ani (MA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kartography (Hardcover)
a recommendation on a discussin forum, brought my attention to his piece, and I kept postpoing it. My first attempt at kartography , got it from my library 2 weeks, a 14 day book. Started out dry in the begging, with Karim and Raheen two kids, aged 14, go for holidays to Aunt Laila's farm. They both of them have an epiphany they aren't clear about. karim a Bengali, decides to overlook, either having an inkling of the facts wheras Raheen is curious, asks her uncle until a fight one day, makes her decide she is never going to enquire on the topic again.As to how detrimental it is to have dead secrets buried, more so for the secrets to remain buried, shows up a decade, there's more buried under, thatz been blocked out, and one fine day the truth is out in the open and a shocker, as to why Karim and Raheen could never become one, inspite of their undying love for each other. The book starts out at an excellent pace after Raheen's grown up and studying in NY, and they show her reading that romantic stuff, from that part on, I couldn't stop reading , till I finished. It was such an enjoyable read. And towards the end She really messed it up like in the beginning where it's all about tying loose end. I had to read the parental generation story twice or thrice before I understood the gist of what happened. Karim and Raheen once grown up , was the wonderful part to read. All those child - age realizations didn't really impress me. Worth a read, once wish there was more of spice. more of a tale, and really there were more personal rants, with the story being narrated in backdrops.. specially the partition scene made a comeback for a very brief period of time. .. But I guess it could have been edited a lot more, most of those adolescent scenes could have been dropped in order to make way for an impressive romance between Karim and Raheen. I kept waiting for more, and more.. and well.. it was disappointing..
4.0 out of 5 stars
Engaging, Witty and Astute: But tread slowly,
By Bushra (London, U.K.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Kartography (Hardcover)
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.
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