Maps for Lost Lovers

Zusatztext “Impressive. . . . [Aslam’s] prose is stylistically dazzling. . . . His characters’ inner lives are explored in-depth! flaws and all. . . . A novel as affecting as it is provocative.”— Los Angeles Times Book Review “Extraordinary. . . . It deepens our knowledge of life. . . . Aslam has created a novel which–grave yet exultant! brutal but compassionate–achieves its complex humanity! and its final affirmations of love and beauty! through a real reckoning with despair and heartbreak.”— The New York Review of Books “Artful . . . and heartbreaking. . . . [Aslam’s] prose is richly atmospheric! his tone engagingly introspective.”— The New York Times Book Review “A writer’s tour de force. . . . Powerful.”— San Francisco Chronicle “Aslam is a rich and vividly metaphorical writer . . . This is an exquisitely sad novel! and it is worth the effort of letting its spell take you over.”— Newsday “Poetic! sensuous! precisely descriptive and lavishly allusive prose . . . Maps for Lost Lovers not only an important and memorable achievement! but a book that is deeply satisfying to read.”— The Washington Times “Aslam reveals–artfully and heartbreakingly–a psychology at war with itself . . . His prose is richly atmospheric! his tone engagingly introspective.”—Akash Kapur! The New York Times Book Review “[An] exquisitely crafted! lushly written novel . . . Aslam combines sensual prose with a compelling storyline.”— Booklist “Poignant! lushly written . . . a truthful story that resists easy conclusions.”— Publishers Weekly “[A] painstakingly crafted exploration of cultural conflict . . . exquisite.”— Kirkus Informationen zum Autor Nadeem Aslam Klappentext If Gabriel García Márquez had chosen to write about Pakistani immigrants in England, he might have produced a novel as beautiful and devastating as Maps for Lost Lovers. Jugnu and Chanda have disappeared. Like thousands of people all over England, they were lovers and living together out of wedlock. To Chanda's family, however, the disgrace was unforgivable. Perhaps enough so as to warrant murder. As he explores the disappearance and its aftermath through the eyes of Jugnu's worldly older brother, Shamas, and his devout wife, Kaukab, Nadeem Aslam creates a closely observed and affecting portrait of people whose traditions threaten to bury them alive. The result is a tour de force, intimate, affecting, tragic and suspenseful. The Night of the Great Peacock Moths Shamas stands in the open door and watches the earth, the magnet that it is, pulling snowflakes out of the sky towards itself. With their deliberate, almost-impaired pace, they fall like feathers sinking in water. The snowstorm has rinsed the air of the incense that drifts into the houses from the nearby lake with the xylophone jetty, but it is there even when absent, drawing attention to its own disappearance. This is the first snow of the season and the neighbourhood’s children will be on the slopes all day today, burning candles to heat the runners of toboggans to make them slip with increased fluency, daring each other to lick the frozen spikes of the railings around the church and those around the mosque, smuggling cheese-graters out of the kitchens to refine the symmetry of the snowmen they will build, oblivious to the cold because everything is a sublime adventure at that age; an oyster tolerates the pearl embedded in its flesh, and so the pebbles on the lake shore don’t seem to pain the soles of the children’s bare feet. An icicle breaks off from above and drops like a radiant dagger towards Shamas, shattering on the stone step he is standing on, turning into white powder the way a crystal of sugar loses its transparency when crushed. With a movement of his foot, Shamas sends this temporary debris into the snow-cover...

Product details

• Authors: Nadeem Aslam
• Publisher: Vintage USA
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 09.05.2006
• EAN: 9781400076970
• ISBN: 978-1-4000-7697-0
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 133 mm x 203 mm x 21 mm
• Series: Vintage International; Vintage International
• Subject: Fiction > Narrative literature