Kartography

by Kamila Shamsie

Book Overview

Raheen and her best friend, Karim, share an idyllic childhood in upper-class Karachi. Their parents were even once engaged to each others' partners until they rematched in what they call "the fianc?e swap." But as adolescence distances the friends, Karim takes refuge in maps while Raheen searches for the secret behind her parents' exchange. What she uncovers reveals not just a family's but a country's turbulent history-and a grown-up Raheen and Karim...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156029731
• ISBN13: 9780156029735
• Release Date: June 2004
• Publisher: Harper Paperbacks
• Length: 305 Pages
• Weight: 0.73 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Honest and heartachingly true

Goodness, I was SO emotionally invested in this book. It is narrated by a person whom I love so much...she is such a wonderfully TRUE character and I so ABSOLUTELY identify with her. Plus, the narrative style is so personable and delightful...it's a gorgeous story. The images of maps (duh! It's called Kartography...which I'm guessing is a combination of cartography and the fact that it is set in Karachi) and the way that residents of Karachi relate to space and place names...it's just BRILLIANT. These were some of the most accurately depicted 13 year olds I'd ever read, and their early twentysomething selves are equally true and satisfying. It was a bit amazing to me how much I could relate to them when I was fortunate enough to never have lived through all the civil war, violence and uprisings of Pakistan in the seventies, eighties and nineties, but that's part of what I love so much about this book...everyone is still human and has everyday mundane human moments, even when one's city is at war. Just, wow. This was the PERFECT book that came into my life at the perfect time. I read the entire thing in one day...almost. I read 10 pages the first night, half of it at work, and then I stayed up well past 1am finishing it (and weeping like a baby too. What an emotional ride, but I cherished it!!) This novel is beautiful and very honest. God, I really identified with the narrator. You see friendships blossom and die and drift apart and change...it totally made me want to call all of my friends (especially those to whom I was close but haven't seen in awhile) but seeing how late it was when i finished reading, I refrained. *smile* Normally, when I've read an AMAZING book I run around making everyone read it (Josephine Tey's "Daughter of Time" is a recent example) but while I needed to tell people about this one, I didn't want anyone else to read it just yet. Because if someone else were to read it and not love it, I thought it would break my heart. I've had a little more time to breathe now and am willing to loan my copy to friends now. Plus, I knew little specifics on all the problems in Pakistan so this book was really informative, too. Definitely made me wish I were better at anagrams!!

Kartography Maps The Intricacies Of Love - A Superb Novel!!

Karim and Raheen have been the closest of friends since they shared a crib as infants. Growing up together in a wealthy Karachi neighborhood during the 1980s, they finish each other's sentences, speak in anagrams, dream each other's dreams and are true soulmates. The two are sure of the fact that, "If I wasn't me, you wouldn't be you." "Can angels lie spine to spine?" Raheen wonders to herself. "If not, how they must envy us humans."Raheen's and Karim's parents were once engaged to each other: her father to his mother, his father to her mother. There is a long buried secret, a family mystery, behind the fiancee swap - one that threatens to sever the magical bond that unites these young people as they become adults. Filled with wry humor and wit, this is a novel about a friendship predestined to turn into love. The metaphor of maps and identity is embodied by the character of Karim, who wants to be a mapmaker, obsessed with finding the roots and meaning of geographical belonging. However, the author Kamila Shamsie also writes about Pakistan, political violence, and growing up rich and comfortable in a land that is always on the edge of riot and despair.Ms. Shamsie writes a lyrical, impassioned narrative, lush with detail. Her novel is a love song, of sorts, to Karachi. Set against the backdrop of Pakistan's bloody civil war, it is a story of a country at war and of hearts at war, where the intricacies of love and intimacy are deftly explored. A superb novel!JANA

Mapping the boundaries of the human heart.

In this warm and complex study of friendship, love, and roots, Kamila Shamsie focuses on the interrelationships of a group of vividly realized, upper-class residents of Karachi, particularly Raheen and Karim and their friends, only thirteen years old as the novel opens. Raheen has always regarded Karim, her one-time crib-companion and blood-brother, as her best friend, someone who knows her so well he can complete her sentences. Their parents, too, are close friends, and as the story evolves, we learn that Raheen's father was once engaged to marry Karim's mother, and that Raheen's mother once pledged to marry Karim's father. The story behind the exchange of fiancées, though revealed as an intimate personal story, has wider implications, since it is tied, obliquely, to the ethnic unrest of 1971, when civil war broke out between East and West Pakistan, and Bangladesh came into being. Unaware of the conflicts which occurred before they were born, the children are also unaware of the reasons for the fiancée-switch. It is only after they have grown up, attended college, and gained new perspectives that this mysterious situation begins to haunt them, influencing both their relationships with their parents and their unique and special relationship with each other.Acutely sensitive to language and story, Raheen, now 23, is writing about her damaged relationship with Karim in an attempt to understand it. Straightforward and perceptive in her thinking and speech, she conjures up imagined conversations from the past with a deft, often humorous touch. Precocious, articulate, and somewhat rebellious as a child, she is, as an adult, somewhat detached and even blase about emotional issues, including the continuing violence in Karachi. Karim, on the other hand, demands accountability. He is a map-maker, accustomed to evaluating and correcting what he sees. Ultimately, the two must map the past in new ways, filling in the uncharted territories of their lives, and creating new boundaries and borders.The emotional resonance of this novel is enhanced by strong subordinate characters. The parents of Raheen and Karim are insightfully drawn, and their story, as it unwinds, shows the fragility of relationships and the insidious prejudices that can creep into people's lives. As the exchange of fiancées is revealed through the eyes of the participants, the reader observes parallel events in the lives of Raheen, Karim, and their friends. Major themes are illuminated in the small details of everyday life, rather than in great historical moments. Through unique observations and insights into human character, this rich, thought-provoking novel creates maps of the human heart, ultimately achieving a universality and depth one does not often find in novels of personal relationships. Warm and human, this is a novel to love. Mary Whipple

This will do its parts in making Karachi just another city

I have never finished a book in 2 1/2 days ever before. I was born in Karachi and must say I am biased but this book is fun yet intense. A love story set in a large urban not unlike any third world country with an educated population, which is yearning to leave it but can never forget it.

I LOVE this book

As soon as I began to read this book I was hooked! I loved how the book was very descriptive without being tedious, the four main characters are very likeable. The story is about the friendship between Raheen the narrator and Karim who seem destined soul mates even after Karim moves away and how they deal with being apart. Its also about the voilence in Karachi and how Raheen and her friends deal with it with the political troubles. I dont know if my review does this book justice but let me just say its a great book. Read it!