A God in Every Stone

Description

Summer, 1914. Young Englishwoman Vivian Rose Spencer is in an ancient land, about to discover the Temple of Zeus, the call of adventure, and love. Thousands of miles away a twenty-year-old Pathan, Qayyum Gul, is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army. Summer, 1915. Viv has been separated from the man she loves; Qayyum has lost an eye at Ypres. They meet on a train to Peshawar, unaware that a connection is about to be forged between their lives - one that will reveal itself fifteen years later when anti-colonial resistance, an ancient artefact and a mysterious woman will bring them together again.

Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels: In the City by the Sea; Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and, most recently, A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London. @kamilashamsie

First-rate - intelligent, vivid and completely absorbing * Daily Mail * I can't recommend A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie too strongly - this is her best novel yet ... Exciting and, in the end, profoundly moving, this will solace you during the grimmest holiday * Antonia Fraser Guardian Summer Reading * A moving story of love and betrayal, generosity and brutality, hope and injustice, full of characters that stay with you ... Will surely confirm Shamsie's increasing eminence in the British world of letters * Financial Times * The voices of those silenced from the pages of history resound in Kamila Shamsie's accomplished, atmospheric sixth novel ... Shamsie excavates the deepest corners of the human heart * Observer * A page-turner that is also a literary delight * Jeanette Winterson, Guardian Summer Reading * Love, politics, history - it has it all * Sunday Telegraph * Given Vivian's profession, it comes as no surprise to see Shamsie engaged in a multi-layered excavation of colonial attitudes, the role of women in society, war, loyalty and betrayal. Many novels are ambitious in scope. Few authors are as capable as Shamsie at rising to the challenge * Glasgow Herald *