Ten years in the making, Aslam's second novel (and first released in the U.S.) revolves around murders and forbidden love in a Muslim Pakistani community in an English suburb.
Critic Reviews
|
Outstanding
|
New York Review Of Books Pankaj Mishra
Combining within himself the social historian with the poet, the realist with the romantic, Aslam has created a novel which -- grave yet exultant, brutal but compassionate -- achieves its complex humanity, and its final affirmations of love and beauty, through a real reckoning with despair and heartbreak.
|
|
Outstanding
|
The Independent Boyd Tonkin
A book made radiant by its linguistic glory, and solid by its emotional gravitas.
|
|
Favorable
|
Boston Globe Laura Ciolkowski
Like Monica Ali and Zadie Smith, writers who are interested in the messiness and the poetry of immigrant life in England, Pakistan-born novelist Nadeem Aslam is drawn in his remarkable second novel to the din of cultures colliding as well as to the often devastating friction among the various religious traditions of the Indian subcontinent and, in turn, their friction with the various religious traditions of Europe.
|
|
Favorable
|
San Francisco Chronicle Timothy Peters
Even though it's overwritten and underplotted, Maps for Lost Lovers does have its compensations, particularly as a rich and detailed tapestry about life in Dasht-e-Tanhaii, an insider's perspective on a world most of us cannot imagine, much less understand.
|
|
Favorable
|
The New York Times Book Review Akash Kapur
At such moments, Aslam reveals -- artfully and heartbreakingly -- a psychology at war with itself. For all the alienation of their exile, his characters' most devastating and irredeemable loneliness is within.
|
|
Favorable
|
Library Journal Rebecca Stuhr
Though the writing is overwrought--some images carry on for entire paragraphs--Aslam clearly cares about this microcosm of life, and his writing style adds an element of poetry to the bleak and seemingly loveless lives within. [1 Apr 2005, p.83]
|
|
Favorable
|
Publishers Weekly
In Kaukab, the lonely, sympathetic believer who inadvertently alienated her own children, Aslam personifies the conflicts of acculturation, crafting a truthful story that resists easy conclusions.
|
|
Favorable
|
The Economist
A novel of extraordinary quality. Islamists would be foolish to try to make political mischief out of it, while western readers would be foolish to ignore such a carefully crafted work.
|
|
Favorable
|
Washington Post Ron Charles
This isn't a work of sociology or cultural studies, but inevitably Aslam's beautifully written novel will inflame the impressions of an interested but largely uninformed Western audience. That's a shame because Maps for Lost Lovers makes more broadly applicable claims about the injuries inflicted by the devout on themselves and those they love. The real calamity in this story doesn't arise from the Koran but from a sense of religious certainty -- and that theme respects no ecclesiastical boundaries.
|
|
Favorable
|
Los Angeles Times Carmela Ciuraru
Aslam manages an impressive feat: His prose is stylistically dazzling, full of poetic, richly descriptive and tender passages. Language doesn't trump substance, however. His characters' inner lives are explored in-depth, flaws and all. Their loneliness and despair are instantly recognizable, resulting in a novel as affecting as it is provocative. [25 May 2005, p.E8]
|
|
Mixed
|
Daily Telegraph David Robson
The human material in the story is so fascinating that it is a shame Aslam has squandered it by persistent and irritating over-writing.
|
|
Mixed
|
Kirkus Reviews
Often exquisite; too often, too much of a good thing.
|
|
