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Broken Verses: A Gripping Mother-Daughter Story of Political Activism, Crime, and Suspense in Modern-Day Pakistan
Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan's greatest poet, was beaten to death by government thugs. 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.
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.
338 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 2005
182 people are currently reading
4732 people want to read
About the author
Kamila Shamsie
55 books2,119 followersKamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi, where she grew up. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While at the University of Massachusetts she wrote
In The City By The Sea
, published by Granta Books UK in 1998. This first novel was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Award in the UK, and Shamsie received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her 2000 novel
Salt and Saffron
led to Shamsie’s selection as one of Orange’s “21 Writers of the 21st Century.” With her third novel,
Kartography
, Shamsie was again shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys award in the UK. Both Kartography and her next novel,
Broken Verses
, won the Patras Bokhari Award from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan. Burnt Shadows, Shamsie’s fifth novel, has been longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her books have been translated into a number of languages.
Shamsie is the daughter of literary critic and writer Muneeza Shamsie, the niece of celebrated Indian novelist Attia Hosain, and the granddaughter of the memoirist Begum Jahanara Habibullah. A reviewer and columnist, primarily for the Guardian, Shamsie has been a judge for several literary awards including The Orange Award for New Writing and The Guardian First Book Award. She also sits on the advisory board of the Index on Censorship.
For years Shamsie spent equal amounts of time in London and Karachi, while also occasionally teaching creative writing at Hamilton College in New York State. She now lives primarily in London.
Shamsie is the daughter of literary critic and writer Muneeza Shamsie, the niece of celebrated Indian novelist Attia Hosain, and the granddaughter of the memoirist Begum Jahanara Habibullah. A reviewer and columnist, primarily for the Guardian, Shamsie has been a judge for several literary awards including The Orange Award for New Writing and The Guardian First Book Award. She also sits on the advisory board of the Index on Censorship.
For years Shamsie spent equal amounts of time in London and Karachi, while also occasionally teaching creative writing at Hamilton College in New York State. She now lives primarily in London.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 270 reviews
February 24, 2021
Kamila Shamsie continues to frustrate me.
I've kept hoping that her earlier books will provide some of the spark of Home Fire,that hasn't happened.
Can she at least give some believable names to her characters ? This one has Aasmani Inqilab (literally,revolution from the sky).
And then there is the dialogue,pretentious as ever which makes me want not just to skim paragraphs,but entire pages.
"Don't you know how much I hero worshipped you when I was a kid ? You were Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc to me when I was ten.You said my cultural references were the sign of a colonized mind."
And
"The next day it's Virginia Woolf who wafts through...the next thing you know she's rearranging your syntax as if it were cultlery improperly laid out for a seven course meal with some foreign dignitary who disdains your nation's table manners."
Add to that the politics.This book has a revolutionary poet,who could well have been modeled on Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Habib Jalib.
I'm not too keen on revolutionaries especially those with leftist,communist ideologies.I've seen what a mess such revolutions culminate in.
And a few words about Pakistan's private TV news channels,with agendas of their own and the total distortion of news,while clamouring all the while for freedom of expression.
The mix of ingredients in this book didn't appeal to me.I couldn't muster any enthusiasm for the revolutionary poet,Asmani Inqilab's activist mother,Kamila Shamsie's political views or Pakistan's private news channels.Or for that matter for Shamsie's pretentious writing style.
I've kept hoping that her earlier books will provide some of the spark of Home Fire,that hasn't happened.
Can she at least give some believable names to her characters ? This one has Aasmani Inqilab (literally,revolution from the sky).
And then there is the dialogue,pretentious as ever which makes me want not just to skim paragraphs,but entire pages.
"Don't you know how much I hero worshipped you when I was a kid ? You were Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc to me when I was ten.You said my cultural references were the sign of a colonized mind."
And
"The next day it's Virginia Woolf who wafts through...the next thing you know she's rearranging your syntax as if it were cultlery improperly laid out for a seven course meal with some foreign dignitary who disdains your nation's table manners."
Add to that the politics.This book has a revolutionary poet,who could well have been modeled on Faiz Ahmed Faiz or Habib Jalib.
I'm not too keen on revolutionaries especially those with leftist,communist ideologies.I've seen what a mess such revolutions culminate in.
And a few words about Pakistan's private TV news channels,with agendas of their own and the total distortion of news,while clamouring all the while for freedom of expression.
The mix of ingredients in this book didn't appeal to me.I couldn't muster any enthusiasm for the revolutionary poet,Asmani Inqilab's activist mother,Kamila Shamsie's political views or Pakistan's private news channels.Or for that matter for Shamsie's pretentious writing style.
July 11, 2024
This is so closely tied with Burnt Shadows by Shamsie for my favourite so far. It felt when reading this tick tick tick to thoughts felt, the writing of psychological insights was unreal.
April 2, 2010
It took me over a week to read this book, twice of what I'd normally have taken. This is because I'd linger over a phrase, a paragraph and often go back and read the whole page all over again. I stretched out the reading to savour the experience. I don't remember the last time I wanted to do that with a book. The story of Aasmaani Inquilab is interesting enough. If the story moves at a slightly slower pace than one is used to in the current fare, it is more than made up for by how beautifully language is used. Kamila Shamsie makes an art out of writing as well as story-telling with 'Broken Verses' and excels in both.
August 2, 2020
I feel a little mean giving this a three star rating - it does have some very good parts particularly in the first half, but the ending felt too contrived for my taste.
The story is narrated by Aasmaani, a child of a broken marriage living in Karachi and still single at 31. She takes a job working for a local TV station which is largely run by Ed (Mir Adnan Akbar Khan), who is the son of a Shehnaz, a famous actress who has not worked for many years. Shehnaz was a friend of Aasmaani's mother Samina, a campaigner for women's rights who left her father for a man mostly known simply as the Poet. Samina has not been seen since shortly after the Poet's death 14 years earlier.
Much of the plot hinges on a code that the Poet and Samina used to communicate, which Aasmaani believes she is the only person left who knows. She receives coded letters purportedly written by the poet in captivity, and convinces herself that he is still alive. .
The story is narrated by Aasmaani, a child of a broken marriage living in Karachi and still single at 31. She takes a job working for a local TV station which is largely run by Ed (Mir Adnan Akbar Khan), who is the son of a Shehnaz, a famous actress who has not worked for many years. Shehnaz was a friend of Aasmaani's mother Samina, a campaigner for women's rights who left her father for a man mostly known simply as the Poet. Samina has not been seen since shortly after the Poet's death 14 years earlier.
Much of the plot hinges on a code that the Poet and Samina used to communicate, which Aasmaani believes she is the only person left who knows. She receives coded letters purportedly written by the poet in captivity, and convinces herself that he is still alive. .
May 17, 2023
Forget about characters and plots and narrative arcs and all those other things that we use to discern whether we like a book or not. There’s just something so lovely to me about Kamila Shamsie’s writing, even if I don’t care a single whit about her characters, or what the plot is. And I began this story not really caring about either, but that changed significantly by the time I got to the ending.
Despite my earlier self-vaunting about knowing a thing or two about women who were legends, I had walked in here with exactly the kind of attitude I had seen so many women adopt when they first met my mother – a determination to see some mythic being, a determination so strong that my mother occasionally found herself behaving in ways entirely alien to her personality just because it seemed impolite to shatter the illusions others had about her.
Above all, this book pays homage to mothers and their right to their own lives. Honestly, given how close the whole concept is to my heart—that of mothers and the struggle to separate their lives from their children—it is remarkable to me that this book took so long to come on my radar, and instead spent months gathering dust on my shelf while I read a million other books.
Because this is a remarkable novel, no doubt about it. It demands a right for women that few books do with that level of grit: the right to keep being an individual even after they have children. And it’s not like I haven’t read novels about mothers who love their children in complex, convoluted ways. I’ve read about abandoned children and ignored children, smothered children and loved children, but I haven’t read any of those from a South Asian perspective, which makes this book so much more special to me.
“I wasn’t willing to accept that she was human. I wasn’t willing to accept that she could be broken.”
Aasmaani Inqilaab, whose ridiculous name is a part of the story itself, is the daughter of famous Pakistani activist Samina, a woman known not only for her fiery speeches and charity work but also for her love affair with a Faiz-like Pakistani poet, mostly called The Poet throughout the story to acknowledge the English moniker given by the newspapers for his English writings. Both Samina and Poet are long gone when we enter the narrative, the man dead in a vicious beating at the hands of suspect government agencies after one inflammatory poem too many, and the mother walking out of the house two years after her lover’s death and never coming back.
“Is it that you don’t want to be your mother, or that you’re afraid you’ll fail so dismally to live up to her that you won’t even try?”
We read the story from Aasmaani’s point of view a few years down the line, around the time when her mother’s best friend steps back into acting. This secondary storyline merges smoothly into Aasmaani’s mother’s past when said best friend hands over a piece of paper to Aasmaani with coded language—a code that coincidentally only Samina, the Poet, and Aasmaani could read. Unable to understand how this could be, Aasmaani spends the rest of the time in the story unearthing old rumours and acquaintances, obsessed with finding out whether the poet could actually be still alive, and whether that means her mother was alive as well.
“Political exile is more glamorous than a daughter entering adolescence.”
As always, Kamila Shamsie inextricably winds together the political with the personal. This is something she has done in the majority of her books: the theme of events at state level having repercussions in the lives of ordinary folks is one that Shamsie sticks to religiously in all her works. This is truer than ever in this particular novel, where Samina’s activism and the Poet’s poetry mean that they are routinely beaten in protests (for Samina) or imprisoned/exiled (for the Poet). For Aasmaani, this translates to a tumultuous childhood, living with her father, step-mother and step-sister but routinely carted back to her mother’s side whenever Samina can give her daughter the time of the day.
Boring? What I wouldn’t have given for some boredom in the 1980s. it was all prison and protect and exile and upheaval around me.
In fact, it is through Aasmaani’s emotions and opinions that we navigate what happened years ago, and how it has affected Aasmaani’s whole personality. Unfortunately, I didn’t care much about Aasmaani and her tumultuous inner landscape or about her burgeoning relationship with Ed, the son of Samina’s best friend. In fact, it was the story of the generation above Aasmaani that was more interesting, more worth reading about, and generally what kept me hooked. This is another repetition in most of Shamsie’s works, where the complicated lives of the generation above our protagonist deserve greater scrutiny, and play a greater role in the narrative.
“Don’t do anything less than all you are capable of, and remember that history outlives you. It may not be until your grandchildren’s days that they’ll point back and say, there were sown the seeds of what we’ve now achieved.”
This was true in Kartography, one of my favourite novels by this author, and also in a bunch of her other published works, but it was only in Broken Verses that it became clear as something of a pattern. And it’s interesting partially because most stories tend to focus on the drama of the hero or heroine themselves and not on what their parents or grandparents did or did not do. Shamsie instead uses the things that happened in earlier decades as a way for our characters to react. History has weight and actions taken years ago have consequences on our children is what sums up what she is essentially trying to say in most of her novels, and while I love this, it does mean that the person from whose perspective we are reading the story becomes less interesting by comparison.
Thankfully, the complexity of the rest of the characters in the storyline do manage to save the day. This is particularly true for side characters like Rabia, Aasmaani’s step-sister. I’ll be the first to admit that I love the way Shamsie writes about women. While it is true that her characters inhabit a social level that is elitist and privileged, I find that I am willing to be more forgiving towards her rather than, say, Mira Sethi, purely because Shamsie writes better, plain and simple. Even though she writes only within the demographics that she knows, the relationships Shamsie explores between the women in her stories are lovely in their intricacies.
“She wasn’t an unbreakable creature of myth. She was entirely human, entirely breakable, and entirely extraordinary.”
In this particular novel those particular relationships also vaguely venture into romantic territory, although that never gets fully explored. Still, in a country where homophobia is rampant, it’s always fascinating to me the kind of things Pakistani authors get away with in their literature. A huge part of this must also come from the fact that these books are being published abroad, with very low actual readership within the country itself. Still, it’s always interesting to see how Pakistani authors circumnavigate the kind of thorny issues that would not have a favorable reception among the general South Asian audience.
“There is no mystery—that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.”
Such as mental health, for example, which played a significant enough part in the plot to be worth mentioning. It’s amazing how many stories with traumatic backgrounds and character growth arcs fail to take into account mental health issues, never talking about them or at best skirting uncomfortably around the topic. Shamsie faces it head on, in a moment that feels both powerful and emotionally vulnerable for our main character, and might have been the only singular moment throughout my reading experience of this novel where I actually really liked the heroine.
We are so desperate to be explicable to ourselves, to rely on ourselves, that we need to believe a certain version of who we are even when evidence starts to mount that the version is a lie, even when the part of us which is not tamed by habit strains to break free and overwhelm the tired, repetitive creature that our character has become, mouldering at the edges.
So all in all, very good stuff, but amidst all the brazen awesomeness of her storytelling, there was one pesky detail that kept bothering me right till the very end, and that was the utterly boring romance. Aasmaani’s affair with Ed was so tedious, watching paint dry would have been better. There was absolutely nothing to explain their sudden and frankly bizarre attraction to each other. On the basis of what is Ed suddenly fascinated by her? What does he do to make her so enamoured with him? Not only does she flip between I-hate-him/I-love-him, there’s just no underlying foundation which brings them together. The fact that your parents were best friends is no basis for the way Ed becomes all ‘Oh but you’re so interesting, so fascinating, I care about you so SO much.’ Which is sad because the romance was supposed to be a hugely important part of the story. Instead the whole sub-plot serves as a weak background for the real tragedy of her mother’s whirlwind, passionate love story. Honestly, I do understand why the author set it up the way she did, because it was meant to lead to the conclusion the story was leading towards, but truly the execution was severely wanting.
I looked at him, and that thing happened between us. That fizz. Something electric. Our bodies reduced to single nerve cells and the space between us a synapse, pulsing an impulse back and forth.
If it hadn’t been for that pointless romance, I would probably have loved this story much more. Not to say that there weren’t small parts of the writing that weren’t very polished. It is true that in some scenes the characters talked in ridiculous ways, in dialogues that no one would utter in real life. Shamsie had clearly, by this time in her writing, not managed to separate her conversations from her exposition in as smooth a manner as one would expect. However, I would have been willing to forgive it all if I had cared at all for Aasmaani and Ed, two characters who played too huge a role in the story to be easily ignored.
Hence, a good book, and one I would definitely recommend for everything else except for the chemistry between the two main characters. Read if only to have a taste of South Asian women revealed in all their complexities.
But if a woman was a mother, Dad was simply unable to view her life in any view except as it might relate to the well-being of her child.
***
I review Pakistani Fiction, and talk about Pakistani fiction, and want to talk to people who like to talk about fiction (Pakistani and otherwise, take your pick.) To read more reviews or just contact me so you can talk about books, check out my Blog or follow me on Twitter!
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
All good except for that utterly pointless romance. Review to come.
Despite my earlier self-vaunting about knowing a thing or two about women who were legends, I had walked in here with exactly the kind of attitude I had seen so many women adopt when they first met my mother – a determination to see some mythic being, a determination so strong that my mother occasionally found herself behaving in ways entirely alien to her personality just because it seemed impolite to shatter the illusions others had about her.
Above all, this book pays homage to mothers and their right to their own lives. Honestly, given how close the whole concept is to my heart—that of mothers and the struggle to separate their lives from their children—it is remarkable to me that this book took so long to come on my radar, and instead spent months gathering dust on my shelf while I read a million other books.
Because this is a remarkable novel, no doubt about it. It demands a right for women that few books do with that level of grit: the right to keep being an individual even after they have children. And it’s not like I haven’t read novels about mothers who love their children in complex, convoluted ways. I’ve read about abandoned children and ignored children, smothered children and loved children, but I haven’t read any of those from a South Asian perspective, which makes this book so much more special to me.
“I wasn’t willing to accept that she was human. I wasn’t willing to accept that she could be broken.”
Aasmaani Inqilaab, whose ridiculous name is a part of the story itself, is the daughter of famous Pakistani activist Samina, a woman known not only for her fiery speeches and charity work but also for her love affair with a Faiz-like Pakistani poet, mostly called The Poet throughout the story to acknowledge the English moniker given by the newspapers for his English writings. Both Samina and Poet are long gone when we enter the narrative, the man dead in a vicious beating at the hands of suspect government agencies after one inflammatory poem too many, and the mother walking out of the house two years after her lover’s death and never coming back.
“Is it that you don’t want to be your mother, or that you’re afraid you’ll fail so dismally to live up to her that you won’t even try?”
We read the story from Aasmaani’s point of view a few years down the line, around the time when her mother’s best friend steps back into acting. This secondary storyline merges smoothly into Aasmaani’s mother’s past when said best friend hands over a piece of paper to Aasmaani with coded language—a code that coincidentally only Samina, the Poet, and Aasmaani could read. Unable to understand how this could be, Aasmaani spends the rest of the time in the story unearthing old rumours and acquaintances, obsessed with finding out whether the poet could actually be still alive, and whether that means her mother was alive as well.
“Political exile is more glamorous than a daughter entering adolescence.”
As always, Kamila Shamsie inextricably winds together the political with the personal. This is something she has done in the majority of her books: the theme of events at state level having repercussions in the lives of ordinary folks is one that Shamsie sticks to religiously in all her works. This is truer than ever in this particular novel, where Samina’s activism and the Poet’s poetry mean that they are routinely beaten in protests (for Samina) or imprisoned/exiled (for the Poet). For Aasmaani, this translates to a tumultuous childhood, living with her father, step-mother and step-sister but routinely carted back to her mother’s side whenever Samina can give her daughter the time of the day.
Boring? What I wouldn’t have given for some boredom in the 1980s. it was all prison and protect and exile and upheaval around me.
In fact, it is through Aasmaani’s emotions and opinions that we navigate what happened years ago, and how it has affected Aasmaani’s whole personality. Unfortunately, I didn’t care much about Aasmaani and her tumultuous inner landscape or about her burgeoning relationship with Ed, the son of Samina’s best friend. In fact, it was the story of the generation above Aasmaani that was more interesting, more worth reading about, and generally what kept me hooked. This is another repetition in most of Shamsie’s works, where the complicated lives of the generation above our protagonist deserve greater scrutiny, and play a greater role in the narrative.
“Don’t do anything less than all you are capable of, and remember that history outlives you. It may not be until your grandchildren’s days that they’ll point back and say, there were sown the seeds of what we’ve now achieved.”
This was true in Kartography, one of my favourite novels by this author, and also in a bunch of her other published works, but it was only in Broken Verses that it became clear as something of a pattern. And it’s interesting partially because most stories tend to focus on the drama of the hero or heroine themselves and not on what their parents or grandparents did or did not do. Shamsie instead uses the things that happened in earlier decades as a way for our characters to react. History has weight and actions taken years ago have consequences on our children is what sums up what she is essentially trying to say in most of her novels, and while I love this, it does mean that the person from whose perspective we are reading the story becomes less interesting by comparison.
Thankfully, the complexity of the rest of the characters in the storyline do manage to save the day. This is particularly true for side characters like Rabia, Aasmaani’s step-sister. I’ll be the first to admit that I love the way Shamsie writes about women. While it is true that her characters inhabit a social level that is elitist and privileged, I find that I am willing to be more forgiving towards her rather than, say, Mira Sethi, purely because Shamsie writes better, plain and simple. Even though she writes only within the demographics that she knows, the relationships Shamsie explores between the women in her stories are lovely in their intricacies.
“She wasn’t an unbreakable creature of myth. She was entirely human, entirely breakable, and entirely extraordinary.”
In this particular novel those particular relationships also vaguely venture into romantic territory, although that never gets fully explored. Still, in a country where homophobia is rampant, it’s always fascinating to me the kind of things Pakistani authors get away with in their literature. A huge part of this must also come from the fact that these books are being published abroad, with very low actual readership within the country itself. Still, it’s always interesting to see how Pakistani authors circumnavigate the kind of thorny issues that would not have a favorable reception among the general South Asian audience.
“There is no mystery—that's the beauty of it. We are entirely explicable to each other, and yet we stay. What a miracle that is.”
Such as mental health, for example, which played a significant enough part in the plot to be worth mentioning. It’s amazing how many stories with traumatic backgrounds and character growth arcs fail to take into account mental health issues, never talking about them or at best skirting uncomfortably around the topic. Shamsie faces it head on, in a moment that feels both powerful and emotionally vulnerable for our main character, and might have been the only singular moment throughout my reading experience of this novel where I actually really liked the heroine.
We are so desperate to be explicable to ourselves, to rely on ourselves, that we need to believe a certain version of who we are even when evidence starts to mount that the version is a lie, even when the part of us which is not tamed by habit strains to break free and overwhelm the tired, repetitive creature that our character has become, mouldering at the edges.
So all in all, very good stuff, but amidst all the brazen awesomeness of her storytelling, there was one pesky detail that kept bothering me right till the very end, and that was the utterly boring romance. Aasmaani’s affair with Ed was so tedious, watching paint dry would have been better. There was absolutely nothing to explain their sudden and frankly bizarre attraction to each other. On the basis of what is Ed suddenly fascinated by her? What does he do to make her so enamoured with him? Not only does she flip between I-hate-him/I-love-him, there’s just no underlying foundation which brings them together. The fact that your parents were best friends is no basis for the way Ed becomes all ‘Oh but you’re so interesting, so fascinating, I care about you so SO much.’ Which is sad because the romance was supposed to be a hugely important part of the story. Instead the whole sub-plot serves as a weak background for the real tragedy of her mother’s whirlwind, passionate love story. Honestly, I do understand why the author set it up the way she did, because it was meant to lead to the conclusion the story was leading towards, but truly the execution was severely wanting.
I looked at him, and that thing happened between us. That fizz. Something electric. Our bodies reduced to single nerve cells and the space between us a synapse, pulsing an impulse back and forth.
If it hadn’t been for that pointless romance, I would probably have loved this story much more. Not to say that there weren’t small parts of the writing that weren’t very polished. It is true that in some scenes the characters talked in ridiculous ways, in dialogues that no one would utter in real life. Shamsie had clearly, by this time in her writing, not managed to separate her conversations from her exposition in as smooth a manner as one would expect. However, I would have been willing to forgive it all if I had cared at all for Aasmaani and Ed, two characters who played too huge a role in the story to be easily ignored.
Hence, a good book, and one I would definitely recommend for everything else except for the chemistry between the two main characters. Read if only to have a taste of South Asian women revealed in all their complexities.
But if a woman was a mother, Dad was simply unable to view her life in any view except as it might relate to the well-being of her child.
***
I review Pakistani Fiction, and talk about Pakistani fiction, and want to talk to people who like to talk about fiction (Pakistani and otherwise, take your pick.) To read more reviews or just contact me so you can talk about books, check out my Blog or follow me on Twitter!
ORIGINAL REVIEW:
All good except for that utterly pointless romance. Review to come.
December 27, 2019
"Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan's greatest poet, was beaten to death by government thugs. 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."
This book has many layers but I was also interested in the portrayal of modern day Pakistan - one woman is an activist, another an actress, another works for a TV station. Aasmaani was never her mother's priority but she is still searching for her and it is heartbreaking.
I had previously read Home Fires by the same author, which was largely set outside of Pakistan, and wanted to read something set in the country for my Around the World reading project. Most of this novel is set in Karachi but some characters also go to Islamabad. Ramzan (we sometimes call it Ramadan) is also observed during the novel, which is interesting when everyone "should" be observing it.
This book has many layers but I was also interested in the portrayal of modern day Pakistan - one woman is an activist, another an actress, another works for a TV station. Aasmaani was never her mother's priority but she is still searching for her and it is heartbreaking.
I had previously read Home Fires by the same author, which was largely set outside of Pakistan, and wanted to read something set in the country for my Around the World reading project. Most of this novel is set in Karachi but some characters also go to Islamabad. Ramzan (we sometimes call it Ramadan) is also observed during the novel, which is interesting when everyone "should" be observing it.
February 5, 2017
Broken Verses is the fourth of five books in our local library's Muslim Journeys program. It takes place in Karachi, Pakistan since 9/11. The main character, a spoiled, whining 30 year old woman, has not learned that she is not the center of the universe. It is a lesson she needs to learn to grow.
The story did not interest me. The author did not make me care what happens. I was only mildly curious about who did what and why. I was more curious as to why this book was chosen for the Muslim Journeys program. About the only mention of religion was the fasting for Ramadan and occasional calls to prayer.
Government censorship of writing and political rally's for women are part of the backstory in this book. The Poet had been taken away and killed for his writing and Asmaani's mother had been jailed for rallying for women's rights. But these were treated more like past political issues. All of the characters were upper class intellectuals and very Westernized.
It took me a long time to get to the end of this book. I was glad to finally finish it. The writing flowed and most characters were clearly drawn, but the story line did not seem real.
The story did not interest me. The author did not make me care what happens. I was only mildly curious about who did what and why. I was more curious as to why this book was chosen for the Muslim Journeys program. About the only mention of religion was the fasting for Ramadan and occasional calls to prayer.
Government censorship of writing and political rally's for women are part of the backstory in this book. The Poet had been taken away and killed for his writing and Asmaani's mother had been jailed for rallying for women's rights. But these were treated more like past political issues. All of the characters were upper class intellectuals and very Westernized.
It took me a long time to get to the end of this book. I was glad to finally finish it. The writing flowed and most characters were clearly drawn, but the story line did not seem real.
November 7, 2013
In this novel characters with what seem to be western sensibilities are grafted onto a setting in Pakistan. Serious issues are introduced.
The story is told by Aasmaani Inqalab who yearns for her mother Samina, an outspoken feminist who has disappeared. Is she alive? Did Samina flee the police? Did she run away her with her lover, the radical poet Omi who is presumed to have been beaten to death? Did she commit suicide?
The story revolves around some clues that arrive through the famous actress, Shehnaz Saeed, Samira's close friend, and her son Ed. Aasmaari desperately studies these clues in the hope that they will lead to her mother.
The theme of abandonment runs throughout the book. Besides the stress of her mother's final disappearance, Aasmaari suffered throughout her childhood in feeling second to the poet. While she is proud of her mother and supports her mother's cause, she feels second to this as well. Ed, who feels ignored by his mother, has similar emotional baggage.
The common theme of family neglect and abandonment due to divorce or new partners for parents goes in a different direction by adding the impact of activism. You see this impact through child's perspective, and those of the former spouse, other family members and the community at large. Because Samina and the poet are radicals in Pakistan, the consequences are steep.
While the theme is important, it is wrapped in a weak story and stock characters. It was all too easy for Aasmaari to leave her job at the oil company get what appears to be a make work job at the TV station; connections or not, this is a trick in a country with such a high unemployment rate. The clues themselves are not written to the standard expected of a celebrated poet. The characters, some of whom drop literary allusions to American and British literature, seem more like people you meet at a US Starbucks, than in Karachi, Pakistan. Dad is the perfect Dad and he has found a perfect partner in Beema. Ed's immature behavior does not fit in with the importance and responsibilities of his job.
I'd like to rate this higher for the attempt at serious content, but with both the plot and characters needing more depth I'll keep it at a 3.
The story is told by Aasmaani Inqalab who yearns for her mother Samina, an outspoken feminist who has disappeared. Is she alive? Did Samina flee the police? Did she run away her with her lover, the radical poet Omi who is presumed to have been beaten to death? Did she commit suicide?
The story revolves around some clues that arrive through the famous actress, Shehnaz Saeed, Samira's close friend, and her son Ed. Aasmaari desperately studies these clues in the hope that they will lead to her mother.
The theme of abandonment runs throughout the book. Besides the stress of her mother's final disappearance, Aasmaari suffered throughout her childhood in feeling second to the poet. While she is proud of her mother and supports her mother's cause, she feels second to this as well. Ed, who feels ignored by his mother, has similar emotional baggage.
The common theme of family neglect and abandonment due to divorce or new partners for parents goes in a different direction by adding the impact of activism. You see this impact through child's perspective, and those of the former spouse, other family members and the community at large. Because Samina and the poet are radicals in Pakistan, the consequences are steep.
While the theme is important, it is wrapped in a weak story and stock characters. It was all too easy for Aasmaari to leave her job at the oil company get what appears to be a make work job at the TV station; connections or not, this is a trick in a country with such a high unemployment rate. The clues themselves are not written to the standard expected of a celebrated poet. The characters, some of whom drop literary allusions to American and British literature, seem more like people you meet at a US Starbucks, than in Karachi, Pakistan. Dad is the perfect Dad and he has found a perfect partner in Beema. Ed's immature behavior does not fit in with the importance and responsibilities of his job.
I'd like to rate this higher for the attempt at serious content, but with both the plot and characters needing more depth I'll keep it at a 3.
March 14, 2008
Initially, I really enjoyed this novel. It's written by a Pakistani woman, and is set in Karachi, Pakistan. Shamsie's language is beautiful, and there are many striking turns of phrase. Her female protagonist is pleasantly introspective, and the novel attempts to place the story within a specific politico-historical context.
However, as the novel progresses, those pleasing aspects become annoying. The plot, it turns out, is merely a means of allowing her characters to move from one scene of introspective moodiness to another. The beautiful language in the novel's initial chapters becomes self-consciously lyrical, repeatedly drawing attention to itself. Moreover, Shamsie seems to be trying too hard to make this a political novel. It lacks the subtlety and grace that many finer novels possess. the last three chapters of the book wrap up the storyline entirely too neatly and abruptly, and though the protagonist has supposedly made a journey of self-discovery, the ending leaves me wondering if she actually has.
The first half of the novel is wonderful, but it tapers off in teh second half and becomes too self-conscious. The book tries to accomplish too much, and tries too hard, at that. But all-in-all, I recommend it for beach reading.
However, as the novel progresses, those pleasing aspects become annoying. The plot, it turns out, is merely a means of allowing her characters to move from one scene of introspective moodiness to another. The beautiful language in the novel's initial chapters becomes self-consciously lyrical, repeatedly drawing attention to itself. Moreover, Shamsie seems to be trying too hard to make this a political novel. It lacks the subtlety and grace that many finer novels possess. the last three chapters of the book wrap up the storyline entirely too neatly and abruptly, and though the protagonist has supposedly made a journey of self-discovery, the ending leaves me wondering if she actually has.
The first half of the novel is wonderful, but it tapers off in teh second half and becomes too self-conscious. The book tries to accomplish too much, and tries too hard, at that. But all-in-all, I recommend it for beach reading.
January 6, 2022
Redolent of “Aftershocks” - another fortunate young woman in an unfortunate country who obsesses on her losses in a life of prosperity. On and on about the physical manifestations of her emotions. Surrounded by an endlessly patient and loving family, she refuses to accept the obvious truth, leaving her perfectly vulnerable for disinformation. One of those books that does plenty of telling you, but has a woeful dearth of showing you.
And she is irritatingly confused - I love Ed, I hate Ed, I don’t like Ed, but wait, maybe I do. I treat him like feces and wonder why he hasn’t called. No, she’s not 12, she’s 30. We hear of her intellect, her rich educational background - but twice, not once, but twice she refers to breathing deeply “the carbon dioxide expelled by the plants around me.”
We all make a story of our lives to survive; one which lends us comfort, forgiveness with our past, and maybe a bit of hope for the future. If we tried we could make them all into tragedies, but we’d find no solace there. Harriet Tubman took stock and said "We out".
I’m donating an extra star because she’s the first Pakistani woman novelist I’ve read.
And she is irritatingly confused - I love Ed, I hate Ed, I don’t like Ed, but wait, maybe I do. I treat him like feces and wonder why he hasn’t called. No, she’s not 12, she’s 30. We hear of her intellect, her rich educational background - but twice, not once, but twice she refers to breathing deeply “the carbon dioxide expelled by the plants around me.”
We all make a story of our lives to survive; one which lends us comfort, forgiveness with our past, and maybe a bit of hope for the future. If we tried we could make them all into tragedies, but we’d find no solace there. Harriet Tubman took stock and said "We out".
I’m donating an extra star because she’s the first Pakistani woman novelist I’ve read.
July 20, 2009
Wow. I almost gave up on this book before I got 50 pages in, and I am glad I didn't It wasn't the best book I have read, by far, but It was interesting and I loved the writing style whenever the poet would take over in his letters. I would love to read a whole book of those letters.
The basic story was of a woman who has allowed the disappearnce of her mother, and the death of her Omi (a poet and her step-father figure) to change her entire character. It isn't very suprising though, since they seemed to create the character she was as a child as well. When they were in her life she was an interesting, well educated and incredibly bright child who was always learning and curius and full of life. When they left her she stoppped trying to use her mind and found a rut to sink into, barely living at all. The people she still has in her life, the ones who have always been there for her and tried so hard to pull her back out of her shell, are her father, stepmother, and sister.
Aasmani spends much of the book laying the blame of why she is who she is on everyone around her. It's her mother's fault (for choosing her lover over her daughter, for leaving without an explanation, for working so hard to make political changes when it was all useless, for becoming an icon) and her Omi's fault (for stealing her mother from her, for not thinking of the child in the situation first, for trying to make her grow up too quickly) and her fault (for not being a good enough reason for her mother to stay). Her memories and feelings change constantly throughout, showing how life is never one-sided.
“And it was time for the morning prayer. Every prayer of mine for the last fourteen years had been one single word: Mama. Every prayer and every curse. Without her here, I didn’t know how to create for myself any story but that of the daughter she deserted, time and again; the one who never gave her a reason to stay. The one who now gave her no reason to return.”
“We could spend all night out there, I knew, plunging our hands into the ice-cold river and pulling out squirming facts, entirely distinct from one another, which would wriggle out of our grasp almost as soon as we hoisted them above their fast-moving surface.”
--This excerpt and the background of it remind me of arguments that I’ve been in that I thought would never end. A fight starts over one fact, but as that gets forgotten the debaters move onto completely different subjects that they also disagree on. It could go on forever with many uncommon faults dragged up but no conclusions or compromises made.
“’I don’t know how not to fight for this.’ Mama, how long have you been hiding inside me? “Don’t talk to me as though there’s a choice involved. I must do whatever I can.’”
“Come down to it, Ed was just another one of those men who wanted to fix me and believed that he could. Take me broken, I wanted to say. But I knew already that in his eyes each one of my breaks would shift from challenge to reproach.”
“Fathers were efficient in matters of finance, and rewiring. They didn’t lack emotion, they simply didn’t express it except in tiny bursts. And they were always there. That was their most abiding quality – their thereness. That was Dad, that was fathers.”
“Through me, Samina, you found love. If you were to be faithful to me in all my years of absence, you’d be unfaithful to love.”
The basic story was of a woman who has allowed the disappearnce of her mother, and the death of her Omi (a poet and her step-father figure) to change her entire character. It isn't very suprising though, since they seemed to create the character she was as a child as well. When they were in her life she was an interesting, well educated and incredibly bright child who was always learning and curius and full of life. When they left her she stoppped trying to use her mind and found a rut to sink into, barely living at all. The people she still has in her life, the ones who have always been there for her and tried so hard to pull her back out of her shell, are her father, stepmother, and sister.
Aasmani spends much of the book laying the blame of why she is who she is on everyone around her. It's her mother's fault (for choosing her lover over her daughter, for leaving without an explanation, for working so hard to make political changes when it was all useless, for becoming an icon) and her Omi's fault (for stealing her mother from her, for not thinking of the child in the situation first, for trying to make her grow up too quickly) and her fault (for not being a good enough reason for her mother to stay). Her memories and feelings change constantly throughout, showing how life is never one-sided.
“And it was time for the morning prayer. Every prayer of mine for the last fourteen years had been one single word: Mama. Every prayer and every curse. Without her here, I didn’t know how to create for myself any story but that of the daughter she deserted, time and again; the one who never gave her a reason to stay. The one who now gave her no reason to return.”
“We could spend all night out there, I knew, plunging our hands into the ice-cold river and pulling out squirming facts, entirely distinct from one another, which would wriggle out of our grasp almost as soon as we hoisted them above their fast-moving surface.”
--This excerpt and the background of it remind me of arguments that I’ve been in that I thought would never end. A fight starts over one fact, but as that gets forgotten the debaters move onto completely different subjects that they also disagree on. It could go on forever with many uncommon faults dragged up but no conclusions or compromises made.
“’I don’t know how not to fight for this.’ Mama, how long have you been hiding inside me? “Don’t talk to me as though there’s a choice involved. I must do whatever I can.’”
“Come down to it, Ed was just another one of those men who wanted to fix me and believed that he could. Take me broken, I wanted to say. But I knew already that in his eyes each one of my breaks would shift from challenge to reproach.”
“Fathers were efficient in matters of finance, and rewiring. They didn’t lack emotion, they simply didn’t express it except in tiny bursts. And they were always there. That was their most abiding quality – their thereness. That was Dad, that was fathers.”
“Through me, Samina, you found love. If you were to be faithful to me in all my years of absence, you’d be unfaithful to love.”
June 28, 2014
Okay, I know I'm cheating here but I'm done reading this book. I made it to the 85% mark and that's it for me. Ed wrote the letters. Game over. I didn't relate to any of the characters. Storyline useless. Didn't learn much about Pakistani anything. There are too many great books out there in which you really get a fantastic understanding of Muslim issues, culture, religion, etc., that I'm not willing to spend another minute on this one. The one star is for fairly decent writing, but after a while you start feeling like the protagonist's therapist (without the matching pay check). No more whining for me. Just get on with your life already. Unless someone can tell me why I need to finish the book, I'M moving on!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 30, 2019
Intriguing and emotional, like all her works are, but also tiring and convoluted.
April 1, 2019
Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie is in the first-person point of view of Aasmaani Inqalab, a thirty-something Pakistani woman. Her mother, a charismatic and prominent activist for women’s rights, disappeared and is presumed dead of suicide 14 years before the book opens. Her mother’s lover (“Omi”), a very famous poet, had been incarcerated several times in Pakistan for his radical views and critiques of the government. His body, with evidence of brutal torture, was found two years before her mother’s death. And now, more than a decade after their deaths, Aasmaani still struggles with accepting their disappearance from her life.
The novel opens with Aasmaani taking a job at a local T.V. station in Karachi. She has apparently drifted aimlessly in life since her mother’s disappearance. While at the T.V. station, she receives coded letters forwarded to her by a famous actress who was one of her mother’s closest friends. These letters convince her that either the poet or her mother or both are still alive. She de-codes each letter and becomes obsessed with investigating the circumstances of their alleged deaths.
The plot is interesting and has potential. Unfortunately, it fails in execution. Aasmaani is a self-obsessed whining character who spends an interminable amount of time fretting about not being the center of her mother’s life. This “poor me” stance goes on throughout the novel, ad nauseum. She spends an inordinate amount of time obsessively remembering her mother and alternating between feelings of anger and love toward her for choosing to be with the Poet rather than with her own daughter. These ruminations are tedious and weigh down the novel.
And then there is the issue of Aasmaani’s relationships. She has a strained relationship with her father, her step-mother, and step-sister—three people who continue to shower her with unconditional love. She has a love/hate relationship with the movie star’s son who also happens to be a colleague at the T.V. station and who shares the struggle of having a famous mother. Their dialogue is strained, pretentious, and completely unnatural. They talk in clichés and cite lines from Western poetry and Western movies as if each is trying to outdo the other. People simply don’t talk like that in real life.
Add to the mix references to recent political events and prominent figures in Pakistani politics; an oppressive government; the tensions between religious extremism and civil rights; a halting love affair; Aasmaani’s famous mother as Omi’s muse; a beautiful movie-star whose return to the T.V. screen causes a media frenzy; the mystery of encoded letters; and Aasmaani’s obsessive search for the truth about the deaths of her mother and step-father figure.
Kamila Shamsie has tried to do too much in this novel. And it shows. There is little depth to any of the characters. The dialogue is unnatural. The attempts at lyrical language are blatant and over-written. The mystery lacks luster and ends with a fizzle. And the main character’s interminable whining throughout makes her unlikeable and thoroughly annoying.
The novel is disappointing and lacks the talent Shamsie displays in Home Fire.
The novel opens with Aasmaani taking a job at a local T.V. station in Karachi. She has apparently drifted aimlessly in life since her mother’s disappearance. While at the T.V. station, she receives coded letters forwarded to her by a famous actress who was one of her mother’s closest friends. These letters convince her that either the poet or her mother or both are still alive. She de-codes each letter and becomes obsessed with investigating the circumstances of their alleged deaths.
The plot is interesting and has potential. Unfortunately, it fails in execution. Aasmaani is a self-obsessed whining character who spends an interminable amount of time fretting about not being the center of her mother’s life. This “poor me” stance goes on throughout the novel, ad nauseum. She spends an inordinate amount of time obsessively remembering her mother and alternating between feelings of anger and love toward her for choosing to be with the Poet rather than with her own daughter. These ruminations are tedious and weigh down the novel.
And then there is the issue of Aasmaani’s relationships. She has a strained relationship with her father, her step-mother, and step-sister—three people who continue to shower her with unconditional love. She has a love/hate relationship with the movie star’s son who also happens to be a colleague at the T.V. station and who shares the struggle of having a famous mother. Their dialogue is strained, pretentious, and completely unnatural. They talk in clichés and cite lines from Western poetry and Western movies as if each is trying to outdo the other. People simply don’t talk like that in real life.
Add to the mix references to recent political events and prominent figures in Pakistani politics; an oppressive government; the tensions between religious extremism and civil rights; a halting love affair; Aasmaani’s famous mother as Omi’s muse; a beautiful movie-star whose return to the T.V. screen causes a media frenzy; the mystery of encoded letters; and Aasmaani’s obsessive search for the truth about the deaths of her mother and step-father figure.
Kamila Shamsie has tried to do too much in this novel. And it shows. There is little depth to any of the characters. The dialogue is unnatural. The attempts at lyrical language are blatant and over-written. The mystery lacks luster and ends with a fizzle. And the main character’s interminable whining throughout makes her unlikeable and thoroughly annoying.
The novel is disappointing and lacks the talent Shamsie displays in Home Fire.
September 22, 2014
I read this book a couple of months ago. Then I checked it out from the library last week again to reread it. I still hardly have words to describe how much this moved me. She has this way of saying things that you've questioned or thought about at some point in your life. Her characters are brave. They are willing to rip open their flesh to bare the soul and scrutinize it, and with that those of the readers'. I loved the ending. I honestly believe there couldn't have been a better ending, not without belittling the rest of the novel. This book reminded me what it is like to fall in love with every single character. Ah, read it. Cherish it. Come back to it, and feel everything all over once again. It's one of those books.
April 8, 2016
Full disclosure- I love Kamila's writing. Some of it might have to do with the fact that we share a similar, ardent love for Karachi which in her case, is all too evident in her writing. Her descriptions of Karachi's life, ambience and of course, the sea, are delectable and heartfelt. I became her fan after reading In the City by the Sea. Broken Verses is not much of a departure in terms of the scope; it has her usual amalgamation of character's angst, political and religious elements interplaying with the complex and distinctive ethnic and social persona of Karachi.
The book starts out very strongly. The characters are well etched, the plot is captivating and there is much intrigue and mystery surrounding two of the main characters' fate. Narrative seemed to be progressing smoothly and with a promising premise, you would think nothing would go wrong. However, the book starts losing steam in the latter part and the ending is abrupt, with many loose end tied too neatly with implausible explanations.
I was not entirely satisfied with the plot but have to give Kamila her due, her writing is as compelling and exquisite as ever. Writing in some of the passages when the characters are introspecting is first rate. However, unlike in The City by the Sea, here she gives us a very Americanized view of life in Karachi. She might belong to narrow, elite social circle which allows her to have that sort of a lifestyle but treating it as a general way of life as a Karachiite is quite presumptuous of her. Her characters all belong to that niche upper crust social class minority whose lives, although interesting to get an insight on, are not representative of the larger society. After a while, their trials and tribulations begin to feel a bit shallow, self absorbed and too "first world". Her characters are not that relatable once they started whining too much about their mommy and daddy issues and they seem to be trapped in their own little bubbles of self-indulgence.
Overall, a promising premise let down by shoddy plot development.
The book starts out very strongly. The characters are well etched, the plot is captivating and there is much intrigue and mystery surrounding two of the main characters' fate. Narrative seemed to be progressing smoothly and with a promising premise, you would think nothing would go wrong. However, the book starts losing steam in the latter part and the ending is abrupt, with many loose end tied too neatly with implausible explanations.
I was not entirely satisfied with the plot but have to give Kamila her due, her writing is as compelling and exquisite as ever. Writing in some of the passages when the characters are introspecting is first rate. However, unlike in The City by the Sea, here she gives us a very Americanized view of life in Karachi. She might belong to narrow, elite social circle which allows her to have that sort of a lifestyle but treating it as a general way of life as a Karachiite is quite presumptuous of her. Her characters all belong to that niche upper crust social class minority whose lives, although interesting to get an insight on, are not representative of the larger society. After a while, their trials and tribulations begin to feel a bit shallow, self absorbed and too "first world". Her characters are not that relatable once they started whining too much about their mommy and daddy issues and they seem to be trapped in their own little bubbles of self-indulgence.
Overall, a promising premise let down by shoddy plot development.
November 5, 2009
Broken Verses by Kamila Shamsie is the tale of a twenty-something Pakistani girl, the daughter of a famous activist who has disappeared long ago amid despair over the death of her lover, the Poet. Aasmani’s name recognition lands her a job at a television company and her uncanny resemblance to her mother, Samina, causes others to expect greatness. She struggles with the expectations and her sense of abandonment with a sharp tongue and a cynical attitude. At the television company she meets the son of her mother’s friend, the beloved and famous actress Shehnaz Saeed, who also feels the pressure of having a well-known parent. They are drawn together in a mystery that brings Aasmani the hope that she may find her mother and restore the broken pieces of her heart.
Filled with the language of poetry, Shamsie depicts a post-9/11 Pakistan filled with loss and sadness, and glimmers of hope. Aasmani’s journey through her loss mirrors that of the country’s loss of freedom, as did the Poet’s love for her mother and country cause him to cry out against the injustices of government. Aasmani’s sharpness and rudeness to others reflect the anger and pain she feels over the loss of her mother and father-figure, similar to the way that the country currently refuses to back down to American demands. No one wants to be taken advantage of or pushed around. In the end, the courage to face the future and determine her steps back to wholeness bring freedom and lightness back to Aasmani.
This is a timely novel, and one I highly recommend to any who would like to know more about the people of Pakistan. I also recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi for a better understanding of the people of Iran. I believe that the people of America and all the countries of the Middle East need to understand each other and be able to relate so that we can establish a lasting peace between us.
Filled with the language of poetry, Shamsie depicts a post-9/11 Pakistan filled with loss and sadness, and glimmers of hope. Aasmani’s journey through her loss mirrors that of the country’s loss of freedom, as did the Poet’s love for her mother and country cause him to cry out against the injustices of government. Aasmani’s sharpness and rudeness to others reflect the anger and pain she feels over the loss of her mother and father-figure, similar to the way that the country currently refuses to back down to American demands. No one wants to be taken advantage of or pushed around. In the end, the courage to face the future and determine her steps back to wholeness bring freedom and lightness back to Aasmani.
This is a timely novel, and one I highly recommend to any who would like to know more about the people of Pakistan. I also recommend Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi for a better understanding of the people of Iran. I believe that the people of America and all the countries of the Middle East need to understand each other and be able to relate so that we can establish a lasting peace between us.
August 20, 2017
A code book for progressive feminist Asians. The tale of complexities of emotions and expectations both entwined with Love. Activist Samina Akram is in love with poet Omi, and that love is beyond bounds. Concurrently, Samina is mother of Aasmani, who is living with her father, a caring stepmother and warm hearted younger stepsister. Kamila raises a myraid of feminist concerns in the book, especially from the perspective of a Muslim woman, for example the one is: does being a mother means you compromise on all other identities of yours?
I would list this book as a postfeminist text from Pakistan that very aptly delilneates with many delicate issues of femininity and feminism. On the whole there is a calm air of acceptability and graciousness in the novel, where there is unexpectedly no tension between chracters that would have been there had the author followed conventional norms of how Pakistani society functions. Beautiful, rich expression ladened with intertextuality enriches the joy of read though at times you need to dig the dictionary to not to miss the subtlety. The text is bold that refers to gay and lesbian relationships that too in an Asian context. In top of that, homosexuality is integrated in the story in such a complex and interesting way that it never felt a forced cliched inclusion. Physicality of relationship of Ed and Aasmani, Poet and Samina (mother of Aasmani), Samina and Shenaz, Shehnaz and her son Ed's female friends is very uncommon for Pakistani fiction. The sotryline is solid, won't spoil your read by hinting towards it. Simply, I want to reiterate it is a our, Pakistani, contribution to Post Feminist Fiction. There is motherhood, sisterly affection, respect for sexuality, discourse in Quran and woman, suspense, myth, mystery, Karachi, intimacy, liqour, politics, mockery of extremism, tragedy, reflection of maturity, command and mastery on the art of fiction writing, domesticity, "dildo", hudood ordinance,... (do not read it.)
I would list this book as a postfeminist text from Pakistan that very aptly delilneates with many delicate issues of femininity and feminism. On the whole there is a calm air of acceptability and graciousness in the novel, where there is unexpectedly no tension between chracters that would have been there had the author followed conventional norms of how Pakistani society functions. Beautiful, rich expression ladened with intertextuality enriches the joy of read though at times you need to dig the dictionary to not to miss the subtlety. The text is bold that refers to gay and lesbian relationships that too in an Asian context. In top of that, homosexuality is integrated in the story in such a complex and interesting way that it never felt a forced cliched inclusion. Physicality of relationship of Ed and Aasmani, Poet and Samina (mother of Aasmani), Samina and Shenaz, Shehnaz and her son Ed's female friends is very uncommon for Pakistani fiction. The sotryline is solid, won't spoil your read by hinting towards it. Simply, I want to reiterate it is a our, Pakistani, contribution to Post Feminist Fiction. There is motherhood, sisterly affection, respect for sexuality, discourse in Quran and woman, suspense, myth, mystery, Karachi, intimacy, liqour, politics, mockery of extremism, tragedy, reflection of maturity, command and mastery on the art of fiction writing, domesticity, "dildo", hudood ordinance,... (do not read it.)
August 31, 2015
No one could have written this book any better. The story line was great,however,the ideas represented in the book were like magic. My heart is weeping for all the lost passion yet rejoicing at the hope amidst all misery.
This quote sums up the beauty of this book:
“It’s true, that in concrete battles the tyrants may have the upper hand in terms of tactics, weapons, ruthlessness. What our means of protest attempt to do is to move the battles towards abstract space. Force tyranny to defend itself in language. Weaken it with public opinion, with supreme court judgements, with debates and subversive curriculum. Take hold of the media, take hold of the printing presses and the newspapers, broadcast your views from pirate radio channels, spread the word. Don’t do anything less than all you are capable of, and remember that history outlives you. It may not be until your grandchildren’s days that they’ll point back and say, there were sown the seeds of what we’ve now achieved.”
This quote sums up the beauty of this book:
“It’s true, that in concrete battles the tyrants may have the upper hand in terms of tactics, weapons, ruthlessness. What our means of protest attempt to do is to move the battles towards abstract space. Force tyranny to defend itself in language. Weaken it with public opinion, with supreme court judgements, with debates and subversive curriculum. Take hold of the media, take hold of the printing presses and the newspapers, broadcast your views from pirate radio channels, spread the word. Don’t do anything less than all you are capable of, and remember that history outlives you. It may not be until your grandchildren’s days that they’ll point back and say, there were sown the seeds of what we’ve now achieved.”
August 8, 2013
I wanted very much to write something good about this book,but I just wasn't all that excited about the story at all. None of the characters seemed at all real and I know how that sounds as I realize it is fiction,but I like it when the people seem real at least,the pace was very slow,the plot line was weak,the style of the writing was tedious. I just expected much more after I had read a few reviews. The one thing that I did enjoy were some really great lines and phrases peppered throughout the book,I even committed the sin of underlining a sentence in the book, a sin that I will have to pay for as it is a book checked out from the library.
August 7, 2018
I was a bit too busy to do a top reads of 2017 post at the end of last year, but if I'd done one, Kamila Shamsie's latest, Home Fire, would have been right at the top. So obviously, I went and bought all her backlist. It's not a hugely long list, but it's satisfyingly substantial and there's a fair bit of variety there. Her books go all over the world and several of them are historical novels. But having loved Home Fire so much, I fancied something a bit closer to that experience, so I chose to start with the one that seemed more like it.
Broken Verses is set in Karachi, Pakistan in the early 2000s. Aasmani is a young woman who grew up in the midst of much drama. Her mother, Samina, was a famous feminist activist. Not long after Aasmani's birth she left her husband, Aasmani's father, to live with her lover. He was just as famous as she was, a man considered to be Pakistan's greatest poet (and that's what he's often called all through the novel: 'The Poet').
Aasmani grew up as a bit of a fifth wheel in their tempestuous love affair and lives which were made even more chaotic by external events. Both Samina and the Poet were seen as troublesome by successive governments, and there was a constant cycle of prison and exile, both of which resulted in Aasmani being left behind and then reunited with her mother and stepfather. And then, as a teenager, she's left behind for good. The Poet is killed by the government, and a couple of years later, her mother disappears.
As the book starts, Aasmani is 30 and still living an unsettled life. When she leaves a cushy job at the state oil company to start working at a trendy and hip new TV company, she comes across an old friend of her mother and stepfather's. This woman is just as famous as they were, Pakistan's greatest actress, who retired many years ago and is now making a comeback in a series for Aasmina's TV company. This is mostly as a result of her son working there, and he pays as much attention to Aasmina as his mother does.
And then, through them, Aasmina receives a mysterious letter. It's written in code, but it's one she happens to know. It's a private code that her mother and the Poet used to use when writing to each other. Between that and some of the very private things mentioned in the letter, Aasmina is sure that the letters must be written by the Poet. But the shocking thing is that some of the content makes it clear the letters must have been written after the Poet's supposed death.
I enjoyed this. Aasmina was a bit of a non-entity as a character, but that was the whole point. This is a woman who always felt she came second to others, that she wasn't enough for her mother to want to stay, or even to want to live. She has allowed herself to be defined by that. To herself, she's a person who gets abandoned, and that's pretty much all there is to it. On one hand, this made for a character I wasn't that interested in, but on the other, it is an understandable reaction and I liked seeing her grow out of her passive role. And it made it all the sweeter when the focus moved to the loving relationship between Aasmani and her father and stepmother. They were always the unexciting, dependable ones (anyone would, compared to Samina and the Poet), so it was nice to see their steadfastness appreciated.
The mystery at the heart of the plot regarding the mysterious letters was well done. It kept me interested, and I thought the resolution made sense. Also, I really liked the letters themselves. They are written in a very strong, distinct voice, and they succeeded in making me understand why Aasmani loved the Poet, a man one would forgive her for resenting.
I also really enjoyed the setting, particularly the look back at the tumultous 80s and what was going on in Pakistan then. It was something I really knew very little about. But you know what? I also really liked seeing Pakistan in the present-day sections. I've seen reviews where people complain about this not being "the real Pakistan", meaning, I'm guessing, that it's about upper-middle/upper class people, so too similar to a Western lifestyle and therefore not authentic. Well, it worked for me, maybe because it's one of the very few times where I've read about an experience that seems familiar from my childhood. I too grew up in an upper-middle class family in a developing country, and most of what I read is either about many different social classes in developed countries, or about poor people in developing countries. I enjoy reading all of that, but there's a special pleasure in seeing your own personal experience reflected. I don't need it that often, but a little bit more often than this would be fun. The last book where I identified with the experience was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and that was quite a while ago!
MY GRADE: A B+.
Broken Verses is set in Karachi, Pakistan in the early 2000s. Aasmani is a young woman who grew up in the midst of much drama. Her mother, Samina, was a famous feminist activist. Not long after Aasmani's birth she left her husband, Aasmani's father, to live with her lover. He was just as famous as she was, a man considered to be Pakistan's greatest poet (and that's what he's often called all through the novel: 'The Poet').
Aasmani grew up as a bit of a fifth wheel in their tempestuous love affair and lives which were made even more chaotic by external events. Both Samina and the Poet were seen as troublesome by successive governments, and there was a constant cycle of prison and exile, both of which resulted in Aasmani being left behind and then reunited with her mother and stepfather. And then, as a teenager, she's left behind for good. The Poet is killed by the government, and a couple of years later, her mother disappears.
As the book starts, Aasmani is 30 and still living an unsettled life. When she leaves a cushy job at the state oil company to start working at a trendy and hip new TV company, she comes across an old friend of her mother and stepfather's. This woman is just as famous as they were, Pakistan's greatest actress, who retired many years ago and is now making a comeback in a series for Aasmina's TV company. This is mostly as a result of her son working there, and he pays as much attention to Aasmina as his mother does.
And then, through them, Aasmina receives a mysterious letter. It's written in code, but it's one she happens to know. It's a private code that her mother and the Poet used to use when writing to each other. Between that and some of the very private things mentioned in the letter, Aasmina is sure that the letters must be written by the Poet. But the shocking thing is that some of the content makes it clear the letters must have been written after the Poet's supposed death.
I enjoyed this. Aasmina was a bit of a non-entity as a character, but that was the whole point. This is a woman who always felt she came second to others, that she wasn't enough for her mother to want to stay, or even to want to live. She has allowed herself to be defined by that. To herself, she's a person who gets abandoned, and that's pretty much all there is to it. On one hand, this made for a character I wasn't that interested in, but on the other, it is an understandable reaction and I liked seeing her grow out of her passive role. And it made it all the sweeter when the focus moved to the loving relationship between Aasmani and her father and stepmother. They were always the unexciting, dependable ones (anyone would, compared to Samina and the Poet), so it was nice to see their steadfastness appreciated.
The mystery at the heart of the plot regarding the mysterious letters was well done. It kept me interested, and I thought the resolution made sense. Also, I really liked the letters themselves. They are written in a very strong, distinct voice, and they succeeded in making me understand why Aasmani loved the Poet, a man one would forgive her for resenting.
I also really enjoyed the setting, particularly the look back at the tumultous 80s and what was going on in Pakistan then. It was something I really knew very little about. But you know what? I also really liked seeing Pakistan in the present-day sections. I've seen reviews where people complain about this not being "the real Pakistan", meaning, I'm guessing, that it's about upper-middle/upper class people, so too similar to a Western lifestyle and therefore not authentic. Well, it worked for me, maybe because it's one of the very few times where I've read about an experience that seems familiar from my childhood. I too grew up in an upper-middle class family in a developing country, and most of what I read is either about many different social classes in developed countries, or about poor people in developing countries. I enjoy reading all of that, but there's a special pleasure in seeing your own personal experience reflected. I don't need it that often, but a little bit more often than this would be fun. The last book where I identified with the experience was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah, and that was quite a while ago!
MY GRADE: A B+.
February 19, 2018
My review of this novel is not complicated (for a change!). From start to finish it took me 4 days, probably the quickest I have read through a novel of this size. I just couldn't put it down. The chapters had a lovely continuity and were the perfect length. No overpowering surges in emotion or action, no melodrama. I just wanted to read and read and read.
When I finished it I just wanted to stay up all night and talk about it! That's what I felt like doing.
The principle character, Aasmani is fighting something internal. Her struggle with understanding/accepting certain aspects of her life were well written. The best characters, for me, that Shamsie etched out OMI (The Poet) and Samina. They existed in Aasmani's memory and were shaped through the memories and descriptions. But how amazing they were! I was powerfully drawn to them; The Poet and the Activist. Stunning. And the name Aasmani Inqilab (Celestial Revolution) what a name!!!
I am turned off (what I call) 'frilly' plots i.e. cheesy, formulaic romance plots i.e. Rich and arrogant male vs intelligent, headstrong independent woman, working together, battling egos until something changes and they inevitably get together in the end blah blah.... I just can't bear it. I prefer more experimental, unpredictable fiction.
Broken Verses was also formulaic; an opening dream sequence, a headstrong, female protagonist, rich, arrogant, attractive male, the over protective, voice-of-reason, younger sister (usually sister or friend) the build-up of the plot, some drama and then a conclusion. A safe formula. But Shamsie's wit was in a league of its own. Amazingly sharp! She had me at 'Belzon'.
The writing is incredibly rich. Her metaphors were beautiful...
(p.211 Where Aasmani hands Mirza the spoon of sugar) 'We seemed to be caught in a painting, an artist we couldn't see drafting the lines of our bodies into positions of ritual that we didn't quite understand but which automatically transferred us into another time'.
The mini stories within were incredible (Particularly the story of Iblis and Aadam p.212). The Poet's letter at the end of the novel is incredibly moving and the idea of the 'code' was very clever.
My only disappointments had to be the 'frilly' relationship between Aasmani and Adnan (Ed).. I felt it was unnecessary and perhaps the story would've been stronger for having removed this whole interaction. Aasmani actually didn't need Ed. If the same effort had been applied to her relationship with her father it might have taken it to a different level. Secondly, there seemed to much deliberate 'westernisation' of the characters and their interactions as if to make it more palatable for the non-asian readers (?). I don't personally know much about what goes on in Karachi but Ed gifting Aasmani a bottle of wine on the first day of Ramadan etc. I wasn't quite convinced. If this 'frilliness' wasn't there perhaps it would have gotten a 5* from me.
Spoiler***
How I too wanted Omi and Samina to be alive at the end. It was quite heart breaking to accept how Samina ended her life. I think these characters made the biggest impact on me.
My ideal alternative ending? - It wasn't Ed faking the letters. There were actual letters from The Poet and it was her dad that held him Captive. Since he already had his issues with Omi obviously having lost his wife to The Poet. I think this darker alternative could have been explored more.... and it would have brought this novel into the shadows of an Orhan Pamuk book (perhaps).
When I finished it I just wanted to stay up all night and talk about it! That's what I felt like doing.
The principle character, Aasmani is fighting something internal. Her struggle with understanding/accepting certain aspects of her life were well written. The best characters, for me, that Shamsie etched out OMI (The Poet) and Samina. They existed in Aasmani's memory and were shaped through the memories and descriptions. But how amazing they were! I was powerfully drawn to them; The Poet and the Activist. Stunning. And the name Aasmani Inqilab (Celestial Revolution) what a name!!!
I am turned off (what I call) 'frilly' plots i.e. cheesy, formulaic romance plots i.e. Rich and arrogant male vs intelligent, headstrong independent woman, working together, battling egos until something changes and they inevitably get together in the end blah blah.... I just can't bear it. I prefer more experimental, unpredictable fiction.
Broken Verses was also formulaic; an opening dream sequence, a headstrong, female protagonist, rich, arrogant, attractive male, the over protective, voice-of-reason, younger sister (usually sister or friend) the build-up of the plot, some drama and then a conclusion. A safe formula. But Shamsie's wit was in a league of its own. Amazingly sharp! She had me at 'Belzon'.
The writing is incredibly rich. Her metaphors were beautiful...
(p.211 Where Aasmani hands Mirza the spoon of sugar) 'We seemed to be caught in a painting, an artist we couldn't see drafting the lines of our bodies into positions of ritual that we didn't quite understand but which automatically transferred us into another time'.
The mini stories within were incredible (Particularly the story of Iblis and Aadam p.212). The Poet's letter at the end of the novel is incredibly moving and the idea of the 'code' was very clever.
My only disappointments had to be the 'frilly' relationship between Aasmani and Adnan (Ed).. I felt it was unnecessary and perhaps the story would've been stronger for having removed this whole interaction. Aasmani actually didn't need Ed. If the same effort had been applied to her relationship with her father it might have taken it to a different level. Secondly, there seemed to much deliberate 'westernisation' of the characters and their interactions as if to make it more palatable for the non-asian readers (?). I don't personally know much about what goes on in Karachi but Ed gifting Aasmani a bottle of wine on the first day of Ramadan etc. I wasn't quite convinced. If this 'frilliness' wasn't there perhaps it would have gotten a 5* from me.
Spoiler***
How I too wanted Omi and Samina to be alive at the end. It was quite heart breaking to accept how Samina ended her life. I think these characters made the biggest impact on me.
My ideal alternative ending? - It wasn't Ed faking the letters. There were actual letters from The Poet and it was her dad that held him Captive. Since he already had his issues with Omi obviously having lost his wife to The Poet. I think this darker alternative could have been explored more.... and it would have brought this novel into the shadows of an Orhan Pamuk book (perhaps).
July 5, 2008
This is very personal-- I feel like I could be Aasmaani. She reminds me almost exactly of myself.
I especially liked the author's discussion of the nature of one's character on pages 142-143: "Character is just an invention, but it's an invention that serves as both reason and justification for our behavior. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy that guides our lives, worming its way so deep beneath the levels of conscious thought that we forget ther emight have been a time when our defining traits seemed less inevitable.... and the longer we live with it the more boxed in we are by the rapidly diminishing variedness of our imagined selves."
And then more, "And all around us, people are reinforcing our notions by telling us directly and in their treatment of us, who we are, and what we believe in. At what point does character-playing become habit, something for which we are grateful because it allows us to go through the world with the ease that comes from being predictable to ourselves, even if that predictability takes the form of neurosis, hysteria, depression... darkly into an addiction? We are so desperate to be explicable to ourselves... even when the part of us which is not tamed by habit strains to break free and overwhelm the tired, repetitve creature that our character has become, mouldering at the edges."
I especially liked the author's discussion of the nature of one's character on pages 142-143: "Character is just an invention, but it's an invention that serves as both reason and justification for our behavior. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy that guides our lives, worming its way so deep beneath the levels of conscious thought that we forget ther emight have been a time when our defining traits seemed less inevitable.... and the longer we live with it the more boxed in we are by the rapidly diminishing variedness of our imagined selves."
And then more, "And all around us, people are reinforcing our notions by telling us directly and in their treatment of us, who we are, and what we believe in. At what point does character-playing become habit, something for which we are grateful because it allows us to go through the world with the ease that comes from being predictable to ourselves, even if that predictability takes the form of neurosis, hysteria, depression... darkly into an addiction? We are so desperate to be explicable to ourselves... even when the part of us which is not tamed by habit strains to break free and overwhelm the tired, repetitve creature that our character has become, mouldering at the edges."
May 3, 2012
My love for subcontinental authors stems from the fact that I have so much to relate with them. Starting from lifestyle, poverty to turbulent politics, nowadays I think subcontinental authors have better stories to tell about contemporary lives compared to their Western counterparts.
Broken Verses is another of those glamorous, glistening Asian-English works that fail to leave a heart unmoved. Desperate love, politics, activism, depression and a contemporary Karachi life----Kamila Shamsie's Broken Verses has it all. And everything is told in an excellent style, with a dynamic and magnificent prose that is eloquent, elegiac yet far away from mundane or prosaic accounts. Clearly Kamila Shamsie is a grand writer to watch out for.
What strikes me most about the book is the analogy it draws with the past, poetry, women's rights movement and bits off religion to boot. It is a glistening story with a fitting prose to match
& of course, the book also confirms the aforementioned fact that subcontinental authors nowadays have better stories to tell.
Broken Verses is another of those glamorous, glistening Asian-English works that fail to leave a heart unmoved. Desperate love, politics, activism, depression and a contemporary Karachi life----Kamila Shamsie's Broken Verses has it all. And everything is told in an excellent style, with a dynamic and magnificent prose that is eloquent, elegiac yet far away from mundane or prosaic accounts. Clearly Kamila Shamsie is a grand writer to watch out for.
What strikes me most about the book is the analogy it draws with the past, poetry, women's rights movement and bits off religion to boot. It is a glistening story with a fitting prose to match
& of course, the book also confirms the aforementioned fact that subcontinental authors nowadays have better stories to tell.
December 8, 2008
A well-written, balanced book. I enjoyed reading it, not so much for the political-thriller suspense, as for the way that Shamsie masterfully writes her protagonist's first person narrative. I was pulled into Aasmani's story, her complex character, her authentic voice, and the credibility of her emotional conflicts.
Another aspect that I liked is that Shamsie is unashamedly depicting the Pakistani educated/sophisticated/privileged class she is familiar with, rather than pandering to Anglo readers' expectations for something folkloric or epically historical.
The story is set in the present day, and the extensive references to the politico-historical background of the country in which it is set is merely that, a referential background to the characters' personal & familial conflicts, which are ultimately the driving force of the story.
(And for my own personal reasons I was *charmed* by the Wizard of Oz references....)
Another aspect that I liked is that Shamsie is unashamedly depicting the Pakistani educated/sophisticated/privileged class she is familiar with, rather than pandering to Anglo readers' expectations for something folkloric or epically historical.
The story is set in the present day, and the extensive references to the politico-historical background of the country in which it is set is merely that, a referential background to the characters' personal & familial conflicts, which are ultimately the driving force of the story.
(And for my own personal reasons I was *charmed* by the Wizard of Oz references....)
July 8, 2019
3RD novel of Kamila and 3rd disappointment. She is the author of small talks, lacking creativity and failing to establish a provocative and intriguing plot. One may wonder why a person has to publish a novel that is nothing more than a rough work of rough ideas. With this kind of work, I would prefer not to publish it. Following are some faults within the novel:
The novel seems to be inspired by Manto's court appearances and Habib Jalib's and Faiz's exile in the Era of Zia.
She seemed to have been super horny (Sorry) while writing this novel because she has used words like, Dildo, semen, bra, cleavage, etc very often even if they do not clearly fit within the scenes.
The novel is like free writing of good writing.
Her vision is so narrow like an illiterate woman who is limited to the woman. She needs to learn from Fatima Bhutto.
The novel seems to be inspired by Manto's court appearances and Habib Jalib's and Faiz's exile in the Era of Zia.
She seemed to have been super horny (Sorry) while writing this novel because she has used words like, Dildo, semen, bra, cleavage, etc very often even if they do not clearly fit within the scenes.
The novel is like free writing of good writing.
Her vision is so narrow like an illiterate woman who is limited to the woman. She needs to learn from Fatima Bhutto.
April 14, 2018
Metatextual tale of a woman living in the shadow of partition. She suffered a radical rupture with her past. Her beloved stepfather was brutally killed. Her mother . . . well, let us say, absented herself in a way I read about in The Satanic Verses. Her sister, father and stepmother did their best by her. She loves, and is loved by, many. She lives a life of not-so-quiet desperation. Breaking the code brings her revelation without peace.
It was fine. A bit to much of a soap opera for my tastes, but that's what's on the brochure.
It was fine. A bit to much of a soap opera for my tastes, but that's what's on the brochure.
February 7, 2017
Read this after hearing it recommended from the NPR Librarian Nancy Pearl. Gorgeous book taking place in Pakistan circa 2005. Story of a young women, child of female political activist who left her father at a young age to be a muse for a poet/ political dissident. Carefully crafted novel about the power of words, passion and parental love. Explores themes of abandonment, exile, love and depression. Powerful novel that will have an impact long after I read the last word.
February 23, 2018
Although I read Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie's latest novel first and worked back to her
earlier work, I must say that the writing in Broken Verses shows her artistry in the written word.
She writes beautifully and you can see the eloquence, satire, and deep character development
in this novel. Enjoyed it immensely.
earlier work, I must say that the writing in Broken Verses shows her artistry in the written word.
She writes beautifully and you can see the eloquence, satire, and deep character development
in this novel. Enjoyed it immensely.
February 17, 2020
Just beautiful
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