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A God In Every Stone (2014)

by Kamila Shamsie(Favorite Author)

3.59 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1408847205 (ISBN13: 9781408847206)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Bloomsbury UK

review 1: Beautifully written, but I found this book quite hard going, as it was bogged down in a lot of history and mythological detail and the plot took a long time to get going. It centres around two main characters, who are initially unrelated, but their paths cross twice in Peshawar - Vivian Rose Spencer, a spirited young woman who wants to be an archaelogist and who falls in love with her father's Turkish friend, and Qaayum Gul, an Indian soldier who loses an eye fighting for the British in WWI. The author tries to tackle a lot of big issues in this book, but with varying degrees of success.
review 2: In this historical fiction set during WW I and in Peshawar, India (now Pakistan) in 1929 and ‘30, a returned Pathan veteran who lost an eye in battle in loyal servi... morece to the Empire becomes a Gandhian nonviolent resister to British rule while his brother comes under the professional influence of a young female British archaeologist. A lot of this -- the developing relationships and tensions, the time and place, the colonial and Peshawar cultures, the writing -- is well done. But in the climactic section of an independence demonstration turned massacre (a real event in April 1930), these characters largely disappear, replaced by another trio whose home is at the center of the violence but who are rather new to the story as it has developed. This didn’t work for me. Also, a certain romanticism about excavating the glories of ancient empires, even if they did pass through Peshawar, was a bit much. less

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