Synopses & Reviews
A God in Every Stone is a kaleidoscopic masterpiece of empire and rebellion by a storyteller of dizzying ambition and talent.
Opening on the eve of the First World War in Turkey, the novel ends with a bloody massacre in the heart of India. And running through it is the story of an ancient lost circlet given to the explorer Scylax by the Persian King.
In 1914, Vivian Rose Spencer finds herself fulfilling a dream by joining an archeological dig in Turkey. Here, the young Englishwoman will fall in love with an old family friend. She comes to share her lover's obsession with finding Scylaxs lost silver circlet. But suddenly her idyllic summer ends with the outbreak of war.
Months later on the battlefields of Europe, Indian soldiers are fighting for the British Empire. At Ypres, one Qayyum Gul will lose an eye, and slowly begin to doubt his loyalties to the British King.
Returning to Peshawar, Vivian Rose Spencer and Qayyum Gul will share a train carriage, changing their lives forever.
With A God in Every Stone, Kamila Shamsie establishes herself as a major international voice whose storytelling sheds light on our own complex times.
Review
Praise for Kamila Shamsies Burnt Shadows"Brunt Shadows is one of the most remarkable novels I have read in recent yearsa tour de force of vision, sympathy, language. Kamila Shamsie's subject is brilliantly timely in our era of "globalization" at the same time a riveting family saga in which the very concept of "family" is ambitiously and imaginatively examined." Joyce Carol Oates
"Breath-stopping." Emma Thompson
"A writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world's many tragedies and histories shape one another." Salman Rushdie
"Audacious . . . Epic . . . One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions." Anita Desai
"Into the ranks of international voices steps Kamila Shamsie." Colum McCann
"A work of art, as human as the feel of another's hand." Peter Carey
Review
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 cant recommend A God in Every Stone by Kamila Shamsie too stronglythis 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 lightand 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 wouldnt be the least bit surprised if she didnt 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)
Synopsis
A kaleidoscopic masterpiece of empire and rebellion by Kamila Shamsie, the Orange Prize shortlisted and Granta Best of Young British NovelistIn the summer of 1914 a young Englishwoman, Vivian Rose Spencer, finds herself fulfilling a dream by joining an archeological dig in Turkey. 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. The outbreak of war in Europe brings her idyllic summer to a sudden end, and her friends become her nations enemies.
The following spring, in the battlefields of Europe, Qayyum Gul, a Lance Corporal from Peshawar fighting for the British, loses an eye, and is sent to recover in a Royal Pavilion in England, where he slowly begins to doubt his loyalties to the King.
Returning home, Qayyum shares a train carriage with Vivian Rose whose search for the circlet has led her to Peshawar in the heart of the British Raj. Fifteen years later, they will meet again, and their loyalties will be tested once more amidst massacres, cover-ups, and the disappearance of a young man they both love.
About the Author
Kamila Shamsie was a finalist for the Orange Prize and was selected as one of
Grantas Best of Young British Novelists. She is the author of five other novels:
In the City by the Sea,
Kartography,
Salt and Saffron,
Broken Verses, and
Burnt Shadows. She lives in London.