What is the moment that exact moment when everything changes & the friends you have been become the lovers you might be? Soul mates from birth Karim & Raheen finish one another's sentences speak in anagrams & lie spine to spine as children. They are irrevocably bound to one another & to Karachi Pakistan. It beats in their hearts
- violent polluted corrupt vibrant brave & ultimately home. However Raheen is fiercely loyal & naively blinkered & she resents Karim's need to map their city his need to name its streets & to expand the privileged world they know. When Karim is forced to leave for London their differences of opinion become a painful quarrel. As the years go by they let a barrier of silence build between them until finally they are brought together during a dry summer of strikes & ethnic violence & their relationship is poised between strained friendship & fated love. Impassioned & touching Kartography" is a love song to Karachi. In her extraordinary new novel Kamila Shamsie shows us that whatever happens in the world we must never forget the complicated war in our own hearts."