Salt and Saffron

by Kamila Shamsie

The Dard-e-Dils are known for their clavicles and love of stories. The family is cursed by its not-quite twins, and Aliya, prey to her family's legends, begins to believe that she is another 'not-quite twin', cosmically connected with her aunt Mariam in a way that hardly bodes well.

Genres: Fiction, Pakistan, Historical Fiction, Asia, Literary Fiction, Romance, Cultural

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Kamila 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.

Reviews

[W · Rating 2 out of 5]

The very first Kamila Shamsie book I read was Home Fire,easily her best. It left me with a rather inflated opinion of her capabilities,as a writer. So,I bought three of her previous books in one go. I was in for a fair bit of disappointment.

Salt and Saffron is very mediocre,slow moving Pakistani chic lit. Shamsie delves into familiar subjects,partition,family politics,love affairs and life in Karachi.

The love affair,this time is between one of her female relatives,and the cook. In the process,she writes a good deal about cooking,and different types of spices. This bored me.

The love affair,has an unexpected twist,but she takes her own sweet time getting there. As the book winds down,at a snail's pace,there is another revelation about another love affair,from the family history. But by then,I was past caring.

I somehow finished it,but can't say I enjoyed it.

[Sadiq. PhD · Rating 1 out of 5]

First of all, although the writer is from Pakistan, she does not have any knowledge of Urdu(besides some common names) and has no idea about the real culture of Pakistan and subcontinent(maybe because she is English speaking Pakistani-American elite class here (BTW, I call them "the bastards of Pakistan").
I didn't like it so I didn't finish it. Kamila Shamsie is that kind of writer and part of Pakistani elite class(they might be 2 % of the total population)who get their early education in missionary schools, they speak English, eat fast food, know only a few words of Urdu, and have a little knowledge about the history of subcontinent( because their parents do not let them)and get their college and university education either in America or in England(just like Kamila Shamsie have degrees in creative writing from America). when these people like Kamila Shamsie decided to write a novel, and have no idea to write about what, so they confuse people with some made up names(for example the family name in this novel"Dard-e-Dill's"). All in my life here in Pakistan I never heard(and can't imagine)a family known as Dard-e-Dill.

[Anum Shaharyar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite my fascination with all family history, I really wasn’t interested in 1947 at that particular instant. But I couldn’t very well tell Meher Dadi that; not with what Partition had meant to her generation.

I try to imagine how it would be if I lived through times of extreme social upheaval, through periods that are so abrupt and brutal that they leave a mark – think of a world war, the partition of a country, the creation of a new one. I try to imagine if this happened in my here and now, on my homeland, making me a witness to death and destruction and then, years from now, someone else read about it in history books, and didn’t realize that for me it was a reality.

I say this because one of the most fascinating things about the 1947 partition is the fact that my grandparents were there. They were there. They experienced it all. For me, it’s something that happened ages ago. Something I only ever encounter in history books. But for them it was a part of their lives. The same for my parents and 1971. In terms of passages of time, the creation of Bangladesh wasn’t something that happened generations ago. People whom I live with and talk to and love were part of this history, and it never ceases to amaze me that it hasn’t left some permanent, visible mark on their bodies, something which will mark them out as having experienced it.

That whole generation of my relatives mystified me. How had they sustained, for so long, the bitterness brought on by the events of 1947? I could believe it of one person, or two, but good God! Our family was huge and yet there was never any word of reconciliation across the borders of India and Pakistan.

Partition – and the separation of families and tearing of homes – is the main topic in this book, but it’s a disservice to this story to say that that’s all it is about. Kamila Shamsie incorporates a lot more into such a short story, with a special focus on class, and our reactions to it. Aliya, our protagonist, is a recent American graduate returning to Karachi, forced to finally confront after four years of avoidance the thing that she ran away from.

Reduce all stories to their basic elements and you’ll see all families are possessed of prejudice – that alternative name for ‘fear’.

Four years ago (spoilers ahead), Aliya got into a fight with her grandmother about how Mariam Aapi, a family member who emerged from nowhere claiming to be a relative, had run away with the cook. Now Aliya is back and forced to confront the reality of her own reactions to the elopement, and her weird, conflicted, torturous feelings about the love affair – an affair far more shocking because of the difference in class and wealth between the two lovers.

“Call me a snob if you want to, but what the hell do any one of us have to say to the great mass of our compatriots? We can talk about cricket and complain about the politicians, but then what? I’m not denying that they could be wonderful people, but that’s really not the point."

Class – and the treatment of people because of their perceptions of it – has always been a fascinating concept to me, purely because sometimes it can be so abstract and fluid. In Pakistan, it becomes even more so because of our past as a colonized nation, and the decades of notions that we’ve dragged along with us because of our British rulers. Just the other day I was involved in a heated debate with someone over judging someone because of their ability to speak fluent English. Pakistanis, whose national language is Urdu, equate knowledge and intelligence (and hence education, and hence access to education and money to pay for education) with higher class, because English is the language we’re taught in schools. So if you speak English fluently, it must mean that you’re a rich person.

Putting aside the very interesting conversation one can have about Pakistan and languages for now, my point is that in Pakistan the concept of class is more confusing than one can imagine. But like all other places, one thing is constant: the very, very stark line that separates us from them, especially in situations of romantic love, which is just unthinkable.

‘Of course, you don’t marry an individual. You marry a family.’

Kamila Shamsie connects the story of class now to the story of a family torn apart then, six decades of history separating Aliya’s present with her grandmother’s past. And let me just say that this book came very, very close to getting confusing. This was primarily because in the English language (and we’re back to languages again, sorry, I can’t quite get over my obsession with them) there are no good words for your relations. In Urdu, your paternal grandmother is your dadi and your paternal grandmother is your nani, but in English you just say grandmother and then add the adjective before it. Same with cousins, aunts and uncles, in-laws and extended relatives: all of whom get individual, special terms in the Urdu language but remain grouped together in English.

This makes this book, written by an author hailing from Pakistan and who has probably used the terms chachi, phuppi, mammi, tayyi instead of aunt when she was growing up, much more confusing than you can imagine. Because I’ve spent my whole life knowing exactly which particular relative was being referred to, trying to understand the complicated family tree was much harder in English.

If you’re trying to understand how exactly Samia and I are related you might suppose from Samia’s words that my Dadi is her Nani, which means my father and Samia’s mother are siblings and, therefore, Samia and I are first cousins. It’s never that simple. Dadi is my father’s mother; she is not, however, Samia’s mother’s mother as Samia’s use of the term ‘Nani’ implies, but rather Samia’s mother’s mother’s sister, and so Samia and I are second cousins.

It’s understandable if at this point your reaction is somewhere along the lines of What the what now? Because that was basically my reaction too. But there are other, more redeemable reasons to keep reading this book. And one of these is the familiar, loving way Kamila Shamsie talks about Karachi, as if it’s not just a place but a home you return to, as if its warmth and memories and all the things I love about Karachi myself.

Now that I’m getting married and moving away from the place I’ve lived all my life, I’m starting to have a finer appreciation of homes and how they’re more than places. How they are safe zones, comfort circles, an area where you can be you. And I try to take that to a bigger level, to my best friend and her homesickness not just for her own room and her mother’s presence, but also for the streets of Karachi; of how she misses rickshaws and the shop near her house and the restaurant where we always ended up going whenever we wanted to hang out. She misses on a larger scale, and then I try to imagine migration, and leaving it all behind permanently, because a country was being torn into two and you had no choice because if you stayed in the familiar and the comfortable you could be killed.

More than anything else, more than mangoes, gol guppas, nihari and naans, more than cricket mania, more than monsoon rains, more than crabbing beneath a star-clustered sky, what I missed about Karachi was the intimacy of bodies.

Kamila Shamsie is familiar with Karachi and its idiosyncrasies, the way I am, because I understand that this city is a mess, I understand, I know it’s so flawed and people die every day and we need better health and security and education and our economy is falling apart and pollution will eventually kill all of us in this city, but it’s still the place where I’ve lived all my life. My family is here, my best friends, my favourite cousins; my school memories, my university years, and now my work place, so for me, Karachi is more now. I’m biased, inherently inclined to always love it. It’s in my bones. I will always want to come back here, even with the loadshedding and bad roads and water shortages and general overall messiness.

As I watched the land below, an area of lights winked once, twice, and disappeared. A sigh, half exasperated, half amused, went round the cabin. ‘Bijli failure,’ someone behind me said needlessly.

And if that doesn’t convince you that you should read it, then here’s a really interesting reason to definitely pick it up: in this book, one of the major characters is mute by choice, and doesn’t that produce ten thousand different tangents for us to indulge in? There isn’t enough space in this review for me to go through all them, but if you ever do read this book and plan to write about Mariam’s decision to never speak again, count me in as an eager reader of your analysis.

Recommendation

There are obvious parallels in this book and in Kartography. Both stories deal with a portion of Pakistan’s history (partition, 1971) that caused mass bloodshed and trauma; both stories involve our main character getting involved in the lives of people who lived ages ago; the protagonist is female, the loved one is separated, and conflicts in the past are seen having a direct affect on the present. Still, while Kartography is Shamsie’s masterpiece, this is a very close second. It’s funny, and smart, and you can’t say that about a lot of Pakistani novels. I would definitely suggest putting this on your to-read list.

***

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!

[Lara Zuberi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read five of her six novels, I must say that Kamila Shamsie has set her place in my mind as one of the most powerful contemporary voices of South Asian literature, and literary fiction in general.
Salt and Saffron is a novel with a very interesting story, weaved across three generations of the Dard-e-dil family with a royal background in the years preceding partition. Shamsie has taken up a rather difficult task of covering different generations, the protagonist Aaliya's, her parents, and her grandparents.
The intrigue lies in the mystery of her cousin Maryam who comes to live with them on the day of Aaliya's birth, making them 'not quite Twins' in a way, and Maryam's disappearance several years later, which nags the protagonist throughout the novel. Maryams abrupt departure, and her own chance meeting with a boy on a plane, forces her to question her family's elite snobbery, and realizes that although it bothers her, she has herself been unable to disengage from it completely.
The class difference in today's Pakistan is beautifully portrayed--how the servants and nannies are kept at a distance, and how their lives are not blended with those of the rich, even though they often live under one roof and are a big part of each others' lives.
I cannot think of another book that has talked about food in such captivating a manner. The title is symbolic, but food is described so effectively that one can actually taste it--the sourness of the tamarind, the tenderness of the kababs, the way the cumin seeds sit on the red chillies. She does this while transporting the reader straight to the heart of Karachi.
Shamsie's wit, as always, balances the melancholic mood of this novel. Nicknames of wealthy relatives such as 'aunt one-liner' and 'starch' and the jolly conversations between Aaliya and her cousins, the heartwarming interactions between Aaliya and her grandmother, are sure to bring a smile to the reader's face.
It is a bit of a challenge to keep track of so many characters and relatives in the extended family, and it may be more so for non Pakistanis, since the names will be unfamiliar to them.
Few authors can pull this technique off well, where the reader sees very little of one of the main characters (Maryam) directly, and only learns about her through Aaliya's perceptions of her. ( Though I wish I knew her and Masood a little more)
Though Aaliya did somewhat find resolution, part of the ending was left a bit vague. The language of this book, is so poetic, and the sentences so powerful, that the reader if often left awestruck.
I loved this book, specially for highlighting the class differences that shape our culture at different levels of our consciousness.

[Parsa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I still think she is over-rated

[Ahya · Rating 2 out of 5]

The plot of this book is something along the lines of a girl named Aliya becoming interested in Khaleel, a boy who's not from the same social class which forces her to reconsider her entire family history. This of course is complicated by the author's attempt in order to incorporate actual history (Mughal as well as Partition era) into the story, which adds nothing to it except confusion as well as her concept of "not-quite twins" which was interesting but unrelated to Aliya-Khaleel.

Ultimately, I think this book was trying to be too many things at once, which resulted in absolutely no flow to the story and it was hard for the reader to make sense of it all. Basically, the author was romanticizing the upper class, as well as bygone eras. Also, she kept trying to insert witty jokes in the middle of narrating and going off on so many tangents, which got extremely frustrating because it became hard to keep track of the story.

I might give Kamila Shamsie another try, but I think there are probably better Pakistani authors out there.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book and am struck by the feeling that I know this person and the milieu - of course I don't - her being Paki and it being set in Karachi..and me from arch enemy India..really? The flavour of the book is so much of the North India that I grew up in that I am positively nostalgic. I love a book that bashes prejudices..but of course, no upper class family from the subcontinent would countenance one of its own running away with the khansama maharaj/cook.

Did Misha recommend this book because it's based on twins and not quite twins as well ;). Interesting. fortunately I am not, as far as I know, a descendant of the Timurid Mughals, so I guess I don't have to fear the curse of the twins..

[Bharath · Rating 2 out of 5]

Salt and Saffron had a lot of promise. It has an interesting array of characters and history behind it. However, while the characters are (too) many, the story is poorly developed. The central character is Aliya whose relationship with another man is developing, and then there are a bunch of relations who just appear now and then. The author should have developed the characters further or reduced the references to so many of them.

[Idea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aaliya is a global citizen of Pakistani origin. But a flirtatious conversation with a stranger on the plane sets her thinking about her roots and the people and stories that have led to her.

The Dard-e-dils, Aaliya's family, trace their roots back to the Mughal era, through British occupation, down to the Partition that broke hearts & families and finally their current day status as Karachian elite. Aaliya skips between past and present as she grapples with the mysterious loss of a beloved cousin, the strange myth of the 'not-quite-twins' and the class snobbery that she derides in her family but is shocked to find even in her own self.

The story moves along through various family anecdotes, tragic & funny. These fit together as a jigsaw puzzle, coming together only in the end as Aaliya makes her peace with her identity, her place in the family and the man she may love. Shamsie's writing carries a wry wit inconguously laced with touching vulnerability. This is what takes her books above the mundanity of everyday stories, into sheer poetry. I do think the ending is weaker than the rest of the book but perhaps, in a story of great drama, a nondescript ending is the right one.

[Salma Elmo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 1:
It's 5:47 A.M. Trying to convince myself to sleep but my fingers are refusing to close the book so that I can put my head to rest. I am in love with Kamila Shamsie's Salt & Saffron. I am in love with every word she wrote. I am almost highlighting all her quotes. This is my very first encounter with Shamsie, a totally epic win!

Update 2:
It's 20:03. Just uttered the last words from Salt & Saffron. Excellent read. Messages brilliantly hidden yet very well conveyed. Kamila Shamsie has been criticized by many for romanticizing the Pakistani upper-class, all I felt throughout her book was the opposite. Don't know if I was the one who misinterpreted the hidden meanings or the many people whose reviews were inclined toward negativity on Goodreads. I am intimately attached to the subcontinent, and this author's words were all it took to be hit right in the heart. I would read another Shamsie any time of the year.

[toolie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Miałam problem, żeby przebrnąć przez te książkę. Zdecydowanie za dużo bajania, pół legend pół historii rodzinnych, za mało konkretnej fabuły. Ja lubię kiedy w książce przewija się dużo tradycji i pewnej dozy mistycyzmu, ale tutaj to były tak dramatyczne zabobony, opowiedziane w sposób, że totalnie nie wiedziałam kto, po co i dlaczego...nie mój klimat. Dialogi mocno chaotyczne i cieżko było mi się w ogóle skupić na tym, o czym bohaterowie rozmawiali. A wielka szkoda, bo z radością zabrałam się za książkę w pakistańskich klimatach. Dlatego 2 a nie jedna gwiazdka, za klimat w sensie ;-)

[Marvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's another book affirming the strong impact of families over generations--this time a Pakistani family. Given current news of increasing tensions (again) between Pakistan & India, it should have had heightened interest (especially as it deals with those historical tensions' effects on this family), but the prose was too cutesy, it didn't very successfully challenge the class divisions it purported to, & was mostly just plain boring.

[Sobia Nawab · Rating 1 out of 5]

Kamila is a talented novelist, but did not see that reflect in this book at all. Repeated exaggerated unnecessary information. Towards the end it was just unashamedly predictable and beyond disappointing!

[Uzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book warms my heart...what a way with words the author has...

[Deena]

Very difficult to follow and get into. Not my cup of tea. Wouldnt bother.

[T · Rating 3 out of 5]

I keep changing my mind about books. My opinions are not only subjective, they're also contextual.
This one probably has to do with my disdain for glorifying the likes of Timur the lame.
History and historians are insensibly and insufferably dull and boring. Even KS can't change my mind with attaching all this thrill and intrigue with historical investigation. It may take the entire X-Men cast parroting historical facts to me to make them interesting. Aliya may not have taken up historical study initially because she had to practice cold, hard, wilful subversion but my hunch is, it may just have been the ridiculously, staggeringly, exaggeratively, manufactured-ly folkloric nature of her family history- which seems parodical. It could be KS's comment on the self importance and surmised superiority of families like Dard-e-Dil's (to start with, that's a really bad title for a family; a Persian compound phrase meaning 'heartache'- don't know why I kept reading it 'Dard-e-Disco' throughout the novel). I also dislike Aliya's holding herself in a sorry light though she is probably the only 'underdog' I could relate to out of all KS protagonists, the likes of Raheen from Kartography and Aasmaani (whose name is also a great reflection of how KS does not really have a knack for Urdu or Persian- for making an adjective out of a concrete noun- which doesn't exist and then turning it into proper noun- 'Sky-ly' as a name would sound rather hilarious to a native English speaker. It's not the same as 'Earthly' with a separate connotation. She also screwed up in Burnt Shadows when she kept using 'Mujahideen' as singular- It was almost as bad as if a Germanic retard attempted to translate Iqbal's 'The Mosque of Cordoba' without any sense of balance between 'wazn'[metre] and 'ma'aani'[meaning] but got away because of credentials.) from Broken Verses. My inclination to bash KS's lack of command over what's supposed to be her native language (for comfort mostly) aside, the plot twists and unpredictability do save the novel to some extent.
With a sense of detached chagrin, Aliya thoroughly astonished me with how 'low-brow' she was even though she belonged to a posh family with rigid and nonsensical conventions- felt very warm and familiar but very cartoonish at the same time. Maybe because it was called "Dard-e-Dil" family, for god's sake.
Nevertheless, three stars for KS's capturing narrative skills.

[Literati Psyche · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Saffron is a luxury, but salt is a necessity, Aliya learns in this charming, witty exploration of class values." - Library Journal

"The utterly sensuous descriptions of food and tea are alone worth the price of admission." - Booklist


This is my first book that I've read by Kamila Shamsie. Salt and Saffron is a beautiful, interesting, and very well-written novel. I am eager to read Shamsie's other books.

*All I can remember is the names of mouth watering food* :D



The story revolves around Aliya; a Pakistani girl of an aristocratic family who becomes reacquainted with family members – first in London and then in Karachi. Aliya thinks of herself as a family historian and a storyteller. After spending four years of her life at university in America for her studies, she was unaware of so many secrets about her ancestors.

There are so many thoughts which were haunting Aliya's mind as the things went strange into the family; Why her cousin Mariam doesn't speak? Who are the not-quite- twins? The very peculiar thing is Aliya to some extent start believing herself as one of the not-quite twins.It is the not-quite twins who every time are the source of disaster and shame for the Dard-e-Dil. Aliya knew so little about the Partition of Indo-Pak which divided the family. Caste, family and social status comes in the way of Aliya's love.

Will she become a matter of shame to her family being a not-quite twin or not?

[Jessica Haider · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel begins as Aliya is on a London-bound airplane after graduating from college in Massachusetts. Aliya is a young Pakistani woman and is on her way home to Karachi. She is a natural storyteller and spends the flight relaying tales of her family, the Dar-e-Dils, to several of the other passengers. Throughout their history, the Dard-e-Dil family has had sets of `not-quite twins' who bring bad luck or shame to the family. Aliya tells tales of her family and these twins back to the time of the Mughals, during the time of the Partition of India and Pakistan, and up until modern day Pakistan. The novel alternates between the present day and Aliya's telling of the family legends.
The book contains fabulous descriptions of food that made my mouth water. Shamsie has created excellent, vivid descriptions of meals cooked by Aliya's family's cook, Masood. The title of the book is derived from a discussion between Masood and another character regarding the use of spices.

`Salt and Saffron' explores issues of misunderstandings and expectations between family members. It also raises the concept of fate and relations between different social classes. The prose did seem a bit `thick' and overly descriptive in parts, and probably could've been shortened, but it wasn't enough to detract from the book as a whole. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in Indian/Pakistani literature and also to anyone who loves to read about food.

[Faaiz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is why I make it a point to start reading from an author's most recent publications and then move towards the older ones (if I like the author enough and I like Shamsie). It is set in an aristocratic family but that doesn't mean that it's an unrelatable tale. I see bits of my own family in theirs and I don't imagine it's difficult for others to do so because all families have their set of social scripts deviation from which is punished. All that aside, this isn't a memorable book and Shamsie's writing seems unpolished and unrefined here. Furthermore, this book contains more description of the family which is fine and interesting if it was being used as a build up for the protagonist's own story arch. I wanted to see the struggle and the pain that comes with embarking on something that you believed in but goes against what the norms dictate. I wanted to see my story resonate in the protagonist.

[okyrhoe · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Dard-e-Dil family saga, the stories and the secrets, told by the young Aliya is the means by which she attempts to find the rhyme and reason of her attraction to the 'wrong' type of guy, a fellow Paksitani unfortunate to have been born on the opposite side of the tracks as herself. Discovering the truth behind the unmentionable, the fate of her starred not-quite-twin will, she believes, lead her to the right choices she needs to make. It sounds just like any other tearjerker love story, but it's smartly told, with tongue in cheek humor and deft wordplay along the way. But it's not all meta-narrative, the story is well-grounded on several themes, eg, the personal tragedies caused by the Partition.
I wish though that the frequent references to exotic foods (especially the title) would have been less prominent, as it brings to mind the sappy magical realism of Laura Esquivel.

[Kulsoom Malik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes you just want to read something that isn’t emotionally draining, and this is it. The writing is cringe at times, but some of the images/instances/moments, especially those showing everyday intimacy are written with a lot of care, which makes this a comforting, familiar, read.

[Carol Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kamila Shamsie is one of my favorite authors. This is one of her earlier novels. It's the beautifully crafted story of a very bright Pakistani young woman who has spent time in the United States and England and is visiting her home in Karachi. Aliya comes from wealthy family that once upon a time ruled a princely state in India. She is a veritable Scheherazade, full tall tales that are family legends. Her family is eccentric even in the present day.

Aliya is attracted to a young Pakistani-American man, but even though she considers herself liberal, she is stunned to learn that his relatives in Karachi live in a poor area.

Many parts of the story look at class differences and how her family deals with them. The resolution of the story has a fairytale element, but I loved the book nevertheless.

[Aranya Iyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely, rich book! Filled with so much detail and so much life. It was a bit disorienting at times jumping from one train of thought to another, so you had to pay enough attention to really follow through the maze of the story, but it is a book that deserved the attention and one where the attention to detail very much paid off.

Lovely read.

[viv · Rating 2 out of 5]

Loved home fire so much so was buzzing to read another Kamila Shamsie book but I just couldn’t get my head into this one…. felt like a disorientating exploration of Aliya’s mind with oddly linked commentary in between :(

[Shivam Kalra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Have you ever read a book and associated it with a song? I experienced it for the first time with this book.
I generally read in metro while commuting to and from work, with my earphones plugged in. I recently got my hand on the new The Cranberries album Something Else. It includes acoustic versions of old songs and three new songs (again, acoustic). And if you have ever heard of The Cranberries, other than the hit song Zombie, you would know Dolores O' Riordan is a singer who can shout and wake you up and also sing you lullabies in her sweet voice. That range of her voice, this is what is.
When I was reading this book and listening to Something Else, a song played which made me suddenly understand the protagonist, Aliya, better and her longing and yearning. The song is titled Ode to My Family, and it is like a more poetic and soulful rendition of .
I may perhaps be slightly biased towards Kamila Shamsie because I love her books so much, but she can make even history poetic. Through Aliya she talks of past like it's a thing of now, and how it affects her.
Although it is a slightly sappy love story intertwined with family drama, Shamsie writes with so much heart and makes it all seem so genuine. I have always been a believer that if you do something with your heart in it, then it will connect with hearts.
It's a very sweet and satisfying story that gives you a sort of closure. It may perhaps be a bit all over the place, but as I said, it is may be my biased behaviour towards Shamsie's works that I pulled through it, because I knew the result was going to be worth it, and it was.
The ending is more than beautiful.
Shamsie's novels are so well-woven, they are filled with so much romance that whenever you smile while reading, you smile from heart; if you laugh or giggle or guffaw, it's from your heart.
While reading , I felt so content with myself. And I think there is no better way to live than to be content with your present. That's what did to me.
Could I ask for anything more?

[Aamira Yaseen · Rating 4 out of 5]

'How horrifying that morning when you wake up and your first thought is not of the person who has left. That’s when you know, I will never die of a broken heart.'
Aliya is a Pakistani girl living in the U.S. She belongs to a royal family and falls in love sith non-rich guy which makes her reconsider her family history. The family has many stories to tell and secrets to hide.
'Of course you don't marry an individual. You marry a family.'
The book captivates the reader till the very last page.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's been great to go back and read Shamsie's earlier novels after reading Home Fire. I feel very mixed about this - one blurb said it was like a Rushdie/Mitford sister mash-up and I can see that - the narrator is impossibly witty, the family history incredibly intricate, the politics are complex and love wins in the end.

This is a weird, prickly, sometimes funny, sometimes boring novel that ends up being very likable despite itself. For me, Home Fires was one of the best reads of the year and this isn't but I still liked seeing the trajectory of her style and her storytelling.

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

The joy of good food, the pull of the past and family secrets, the power of caste and class are all interwoven into this story about a young Pakistani woman, newly graduated from an American college, who tries to come to terms with a painful event in her life from four years earlier by following its connections to her family's grand colonial-era and pre-colonial past in India. Another flawed but very much sympathetic character (as well as cast of characters) from Shamsie.

[Lanie · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bit difficult to follow (lack of chronology, many unfamiliar names, and a lot of this fictional family's history), but I did enjoy the overall plot and the revelations and epiphanies of the main character. Unfortunately, the end was weak and rushed -- though I wonder if that was intentional -- and I was left with a feeling of slight dissatisfaction.

[Tasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun quick read about a Pakistani woman who comes from a royal background and falls in love with a man whose ancestors are from the non wealthy part of the country. Also family secrets come out through different connections on the family tree which are funny.