Vintage International
5 total works
Nadeem Aslam's dazzling new novel takes place in modern-day Afghanistan. A Russian woman named Lara arrives at the house of Marcus Caldwell, an Englishman and widower living in an old perfume factory in the shadow of the Tora Bora mountains. It is possible that Marcus's daughter, Zameen, may have known Lara's brother, a Soviet soldier who disappeared in the area many years previously. But like Marcus's wife, Zameen is dead; a victim of the age in which she was born.
In the days that follow, further people will arrive at the house: David Town and James Palantine, two Americans who have spent much of their adult lives in the area, for their respective reasons; Dunia, a young Afghan teacher; and Casa, a radicalised young man intent on his own path.
The stories and histories that unfold - interweaving and overlapping, and spanning nearly a quarter of a century - tell of the terrible afflictions that have plagued Afghanistan. A work of deepest humanity, The Wasted Vigil offers a timely portrait of this region, of love during war and conflict. At once angry, unflinching and memorably beautiful, it marks Nadeem Aslam as a world writer of major importance.
The highly acclaimed and Betty Trask Award winning debut from the author of Maps for Lost Lovers
A sack of letters lost in a train crash nineteen years previously has mysteriously reappeared, and the inhabitants of a small town in Pakistan are waiting anxiously to see what long buried secrets will come to light. Could the letters have any bearing on Judge Anwar's murder?
In one of the most exquisite fictional debuts of recent years, Nadeem Aslam creates an exotic and timeless world, but one whose traditional rituals of everyday life are played out against an ominous backdrop of faraway civil wars, assassinations, changing regimes, and religious tensions.
'Vivid and poignant.' Evening Standard
'Poised and troubling.' The Times
'A real treat.' Daily Telegraph
'One of the most impressive first novels of recent years.' Salman Rushdie
Love is not consolation, it is light.'
From the author of Maps for Lost Lovers comes a searing, exquisitely written novel set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11 - a story of war, of one family's losses, and of the simplest, most enduring human impulses.
Jeo and Mikal, foster-brothers from a small Pakistani city, secretly enter Afghanistan: not to fight with the Taliban, but to help and care for wounded civilians. But it soon becomes apparent that good intentions can't keep them out of harm's way...
From the wilds of Afghanistan to the heart of the family left behind - their blind father haunted for years by the death of his wife, by the mistakes he may have made in the name of Islam and nationhood, Jeo's steadfast wife and her superstitious mother - Aslam's prose takes us on an extraordinary journey.
