Volume 52, Number 11 · June 23, 2005
The Wilderness of Solitude
By Pankaj Mishra
Maps for Lost Lovers
by Nadeem Aslam
Knopf, 379 pp., $25.00
Religion, a young Muslim character in Nadeem Aslam's extraordinary novel observes, is often another source of torment for millions of deprived peoples. This is certainly true of the main characters of Maps for Lost Lovers, which spans a troubled year in the life of a Pakistani immigrant community in a working-class English town. Shamas, a left-wing social worker in his mid-sixties, has long been estranged from his devout, conservative wife, Kaukab, whose belief that 'too much freedom isn't good for anyone or anything' has driven her children away from home. Fear of Allah's wrath also blights the life of Suraya, a divorced woman, who tries to seduce Shamas into a quick marriage and then a quick divorce in order to be able, in accordance with Islamic law, to remarry her previous husband in Pakistan, who had divorced her in a drunken moment.
Review, 3385 words
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