This is a totally engrossing novel with a grand sweep of history, capable of transporting you to another time, place and culture, in a way that stone and marble relics of an ancient past in repositories like The British Museum simply cannot do. Not only do the stones come alive, but in the person of Vivian Rose Spencer, the young archaeologist at the novel's heart, we experience first love, betrayal and loss in heart-wrenching intensity.
After writing so consummately about Nagasaki in a previous novel Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie felt challenged as a Pakistani to discover the fascinating history of the city of Peshawar. Once she had narrowed her brief to focus on the city museum, a story opened up for her linking an emissary of the Persian king Darius, the fate of the precious artefact he was bearing, and the efforts of various archaeologists to unearth it in the early twentieth century. All of this is brilliantly woven together with personal stories of heroism and bravery in the Great War, extracts from Herodotus about ancient kingdoms, the rise and fall of empires, chance meetings on trains, and a non-violent political protest in the city in the 1930s, which turned into a bloodbath. Loyalties are challenged, protagonists cross paths unaware of the significance of their meeting, and people and objects are lost and found.
This is her sixth novel, and the second one that I have read, and with both of them I've felt that I was reading something truly epic and accomplished. I have been left wanting more of her writing. Others have said that this reads like a classic. It would make a brilliant film too. As the Sunday Telegraph critic says:"Love, politics, history - it has it all."
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