About this ebook
A Pakistani woman finds a new clue to her mother’s long-ago disappearance in this “thoroughly captivating”novel by the award-winning author of Home Fire (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan’s greatest poet, had been beaten to death by government thugs. Now, in present-day Karachi, her daughter Aasmaani has just discovered a letter in the couple’s private code—a letter that could only have been written recently.
Aasmaani is thirty, single, drifting from job to job. Always left behind whenever Samina followed the Poet into exile, she had assumed that her mother’s disappearance was simply another abandonment. Then, while working at Pakistan’s first independent TV station, Aasmaani runs into an old friend of Samina’s who gives her the first letter, then many more. Where could the letters have come from? And will they lead her to her mother?
Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a sharp, thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan, a carefully coded mystery, and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how we forgive a mother who leaves.
“There is a succulent pleasure to the narrative that draws you happily to its end.”—The Guardian
“All of Shamsie’s novels are deeply moving and morally complex, leading to the kind of rich reading experience most of us hope for in every novel we pick up.” —San Francisco Chronicle
Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan’s greatest poet, had been beaten to death by government thugs. Now, in present-day Karachi, her daughter Aasmaani has just discovered a letter in the couple’s private code—a letter that could only have been written recently.
Aasmaani is thirty, single, drifting from job to job. Always left behind whenever Samina followed the Poet into exile, she had assumed that her mother’s disappearance was simply another abandonment. Then, while working at Pakistan’s first independent TV station, Aasmaani runs into an old friend of Samina’s who gives her the first letter, then many more. Where could the letters have come from? And will they lead her to her mother?
Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a sharp, thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan, a carefully coded mystery, and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how we forgive a mother who leaves.
“There is a succulent pleasure to the narrative that draws you happily to its end.”—The Guardian
“All of Shamsie’s novels are deeply moving and morally complex, leading to the kind of rich reading experience most of us hope for in every novel we pick up.” —San Francisco Chronicle
About the author
KAMILA SHAMSIE is the author of five novels: In the City by the Sea, Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), Salt and Saffron, Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize and has been translated into more than 20 languages. She is a trustee of English PEN and Free Word, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and one of Granta's 20 Best Young British Writers of 2013. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.
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