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Synopsis
"Four unforgettable characters make up the shifting chambers of the heart of The Geometry of God, the new novel from lauded Pakistani writer Uzma Aslam Khan. They are: paleontologist Amal, her blind sister Mehwish, their restlessly heretical grandfather Zahoor, and Noman, the young man who changes all their lives." Through them, Khan celebrates the complexities of familial and erotic love, the tug of curiosity and duty, the intersections of faith and longing. This is a novel to read greedily, following the characters' lives as they unfold against the backdrop of General Zia's Pakistan, where religious fundamentalism gains ground and the mujahideen is funded by gem sales and the Americans. Or to savor, as the sisters show us: digging toward the novel's deepest questions about love, moving to the rhythms of an abundant and original language.
Publishers Weekly
Uzma Aslam Khan chronicles the struggle of one family in Pakistan during and after President-General Zia's administration as it battles on the side of evolution against creationism and fundamentalism. Accompanying her paleontologist grandfather on a field dig, eight-year-old Amal stumbles upon a major scientific discovery: a dog/whale like ear-bone fossil. As Amal and her sister grow older, political tensions in their country escalate. Their grandfather, Zahoor, refuses to stop teaching evolution and becomes the focal point of a smear campaign put forth by the Party of Creation. Zahoor becomes a public pariah after being blamed for converting Norman Anwar, a former Party member responsible for censoring textbooks. As the nation moves toward the twenty-first century, Amal takes on her grandfather's love of science and breaks ground as a woman in the academia of an Islamic nation. Khan attempts to write the novel from the perspectives of the four main characters, ultimately causing long, drawn-out chapters that are often redundant. Too many anecdotes make an otherwise interesting storyline a bear to read.
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