Maps for Lost Lovers

Akash Kapur

At such moments, Aslam reveals -- artfully and heartbreakingly -- a psychology at war with itself. For all the alienation of their exile, his characters' most devastating and irredeemable loneliness is within.
— The New York Times

Publishers Weekly

In this poignant, lushly written novel, Aslam (Season of the Rainbirds) explores the interwoven lives of Pakistani immigrants in an English town they have rechristened Dasht-e-Tanhaii, "the Wilderness of Solitude" or "the Desert of Loneliness." The disappearance of Jugnu and Chanda, lovers who broke Islamic law to live in sin, throws the small community into upheaval. The police arrest Chanda's brothers, whom they believe murdered the couple to avenge their family's shame. Meanwhile, Jugnu's brother, Shamas, contemplates the loss, occasionally clashing with his wife, Kaukab, a devout Muslim who overtly disapproved of the relationship. Aslam depicts an insular ex-pat Pakistani community fighting to preserve its cultural heritage and losing the battle to its Western-born children often quite violently. At the heart of the turmoil is sexual freedom, and Aslam illustrates the many ways women's lives are restricted and romantic love is denied in the name of religion. At times, Aslam's critique grows didactic, as when he saddles his characters with long stretches of wooden, philosophical dialogue. But in Kaukab, the lonely, sympathetic believer who inadvertently alienated her own children, Aslam personifies the conflicts of acculturation, crafting a truthful story that resists easy conclusions. (May 8) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-A Pakistani enclave in contemporary London is beset by uncertainty when an unmarried Muslim couple-an impossibility for many with loyal Pakistani and religious ties to imagine, let alone condone-are found murdered. Kaukab, the deeply religious middle-aged woman who is both a neighbor and the man's sister-in-law, grapples with the fact that the pair lay dead for many days before being discovered. Kaukab is also struggling with her aging body, her younger son's alienation, and her husband's inattentiveness to Muslim law. Readers see most clearly into Kaukab's world, but her viewpoint is not the only one represented: her husband reveals his inner life and, in the end, the last morning the murdered couple lived is recounted, as are the actions and thoughts of their killers. In spite of the adult concerns of this novel, high school students, especially those with knowledge of Pakistani emigres, will find this tale spellbinding. Aslam writes beautifully and evokes each character's emotion with elegance.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The "honour killing" of two unmarried lovers casts long shadows over several related lives, in a second novel by the Pakistani-born British author. Following Aslam's debut (Season of the Rainbirds, 1993) by so many years, this is an understandably painstakingly crafted exploration of cultural conflict, set in a Pakistani enclave (Dasht-e-Tanhaii, meaning, roughly, "desert of solitude") within an unnamed English town. The victims of the aforementioned crime are Jugnu, a lepidopterist, and Chanda, the thrice-married, twice-divorced sister of middle-aged protagonist Shamas. A failed poet now employed as a social worker, Shamas offers a mediating voice between the commands of Islamic law (literally obeyed by Chanda's brothers, who killed her and Jugnu to punish their immorality) and the less stringent imperatives of contemporary British culture. A further contrast exists between the well-meaning Shamas and (the tale's other major figure) his wife Kaukab, a rigorously devout Muslim for whom sexual irregularity is only one of numerous "sins" subject to the harshest draconian penalties. Thus does Aslam's lovely title embrace not only the ill-fated couple and Kaukab and Shamas, but also the latter couple's three adult children: notably, their daughter Suraya, divorced in an irrational moment by her drunken husband, and disallowed from reuniting with him, without first marrying, then divorcing another man. The great and genuine strength here is the fairness with which Aslam presents all viewpoints (his portrayal of Kaukab, a woman of very real principle nevertheless tormented by the beliefs she holds with utmost sincerity, is a particular triumph). But Aslam overstates and sentimentalizes Shamas'sselfless saintly decency, and drowns the story in a gratuitously exotic and sensuous hothouse atmosphere evoked by ludicrously strained imagery (during oral sex, a woman's body is "as eloquent as weather"; roses die, "each round rosehip with its tall crown of long hairy sepals looking as though a berry has fused with a grasshopper"). Often exquisite; too often, too much of a good thing.