A God in Every Stone

by Kamila Shamsie

Overview

In the summer of 1914 a young Englishwoman, Vivian Rose Spencer, joins an archaeological dig in Turkey, fulfilling a long-held dream. Working alongside Germans and Turks, she falls in love with archaeologist Tahsin Bey and joins him in his quest to find an ancient silver circlet. But the outbreak of war in Europe brings her idyllic summer to a sudden end, and her new friends become her nation's enemies.

Thousands of miles away, twenty-year-old Pathan Qayyum Gul is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army. When he loses an eye in battle and is sent to England to recuperate, his allegiances falter.

Returning home at last, Qayyum shares a train carriage with Vivian Rose, whose continued search for the circlet has led her to Peshawar in the heart of the British Raj. Many years later, the two cross paths again, and their loyalties will be tested once more amidst massacres, cover-ups, and the disappearance of a young man they both love.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632864178
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	06/11/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	448 KB

About the Author

Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels, including In the City by the Sea and Kartography, both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, and Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and translated into more than twenty languages. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Best Young British Novelist by Granta in 2013. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London. @kamilashamsie
Kamila Shamsie is the author of five novels: In the City by the Sea; Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was named a Granta's Best of Young British Novelist. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.

@kamilashamsie

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Kamila Shamsie's A God in Every Stone

"Stretching from the ancient Persian Empire to the waning days of the British Empire, the novel has an enormous wingspan that catches a wonderful storyteller's wind…beautifully composed, and often terribly moving." —Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered, NPR

“I can’t recommend A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie too strongly—this is her best novel yet, which is high praise to give to the author of Burnt Shadows . . . The narrative moves to the struggle for Indian independence and the boy she befriends, against custom of culture and class, in a subtle tapestry in which love, history and archaeology all have their place. Exciting and, in the end, profoundly moving, this will solace you during the grimmest holiday.” —Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette: The Journey, Guardian Summer Reading

“A God in Every Stone has strong storytelling and is a page-turner that is also a literary delight.” —Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and The Daylight Gate, Guardian Summer Reading

“It is a magnificent novel: beautiful, terrible, true. Full of passion, life and intelligence, it is redemptive and uncompromising; it goes to the place where life and history meet to reveal them as each other. It reads already like a classic, with a timelessness, a wholeness, as if she just sensed it there at her feet, carefully unearthed it, brushed the soil off it, held it up to the light—and now we all have it. That's how good.” —ALI SMITH, author of The Accidental and Hotel World

“A God in Every Stone confirms Kamila Shamsie as a very rare and uniquely rewarding writer. She can brilliantly dramatize conflicts of characters and weave intricate and absorbing plots while also crisply fulfilling the newer, and indeed more formidable, obligations of the contemporary novelist: to set individual destinies in the enlarged and uneven arena of our globalized world.” —Pankaj Mishra, author of From the Ruins of Empire and An End to Suffering

“This sixth novel by one of the Granta Best of Young British Novelists, which burns with quiet ferocity in every elegant, measured line, is a book about the echoes through history of loss, betrayal and the human cost of colonialism. . . . Beautifully written, thought provoking . . . Epic.” —TINA JACKSON, Metro (London)

“An absolutely wonderful novel… I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if she didn’t win some sort of prestigious prize with it.” —ANDREAS WHITTAM SMITH, founder and former editor of The Independent, BBC Radio 4, “Saturday Review” (London)

"I was absolutely blown away by this book. . . . A stunning novel . . . This is about how social and political forces are bigger than the individual. ” —BIDISHA SK MAMATA, journalist for The Guardian and The Huffington Post, and Booker Prize Foundation Trustee, BBC Radio 4, “Saturday Review” (London)

From the Publisher