Book: Maps for Lost Lovers by Nadeem Aslam

I will have to read this book.

Does the writer ever venture to the US?


Ras

thaught this may be incidental to the present discussion not any inference





Girl killed for eloping
20 Aug 2007, 0219 hrs IST,TNN





SONEPAT: Close on the heels of the honour killing of Manoj and Babli, a 27-yr-old girl was killed here on Wednesday for giving preference to love over family. Satya Dev and his cousin threw their sister Saroj in Jawahar Lal Nehru canal when she came home after a gap of seven years.

DSP of Gohana Arun Nehra said both the accused have been arrested and have confessed their crime.

He said girl’s uncle lodged a complaint when Saroj went missing on Wednesday. Police rounded up the brothers after some villagers informed that she was last seen with them.

Sources said Saroj had eloped with Satish seven years ago. Her brother took it as an insult and plotted to kill her when she came home

Re: # 12
i hope southall black sisters don't read this you using used/abused words, don't tell me you don't know who they are.

N Sahib,

I see what you mean-yes, it needs to be pared down. Surprised it got by the editor.

Re: # 9 Mulana Sahab,
Why is that ppl like you brand any out of the closet ( holy books ) views - Anti-Islamic. Honor Killings is a disgrace - Prophet Mohammad (s.a.w.) actually ended such things at his time - while ppl like you are for it ; such a shame.

An extract can be found here:





The Night of the Great Peacock Moths

Shamas stands in the open door and watches the earth, the magnet that it is, pulling snowflakes out of the sky towards itself. With their deliberate, almost-impaired pace, they fall like feathers sinking in water. The snowstorm has rinsed the air of the incense that drifts into the houses from the nearby lake with the xylophone jetty, but it is there even when absent, drawing attention to its own disappearance.

This is the first snow of the season and the neighbourhood's children will be on the slopes all day today, burning candles to heat the runners of toboggans to make them slip with increased fluency, daring each other to lick the frozen spikes of the railings around the church and those around the mosque, smuggling cheese-graters out of the kitchens to refine the symmetry of the snowmen they will build, oblivious to the cold because everything is a sublime adventure at that age; an oyster tolerates the pearl embedded in its flesh, and so the pebbles on the lake shore don't seem to pain the soles of the children's bare feet.

An icicle breaks off from above and drops like a radiant dagger towards Shamas, shattering on the stone step he is standing on, turning into white powder the way a crystal of sugar loses its transparency when crushed. With a movement of his foot, Shamas sends this temporary debris into the snow-covered front garden where in May and June there will be rosebuds the size and solidity of strawberries, into the corner where one of his children had buried a dead finch many years ago, not allowing anyone to set foot on that spot afterwards lest the delicate bones crack under the weight, the tiny skull as fragile as the eggshell within which it had formed the previous spring.

the rest of this (lengthy) extract may be read by clicking
below:
http://www.bookbrowse.com/excerpts/index.cfm?book_number=1586

urstruly bhai that's not true. i would never propogate someone who i felt was deliberately maligning islam; i noted in my review that this book has a flaw that the writer (i believe out of ignorance) gets some fiqhi points wrong but that shouldn 't detract from the quality of the work as a whole. the good in this book far outweighs the bad. it is an accurate portrayal of pakistani expats in the UK.

Re: # 11 -

a) marrying someone against his/her will is morally/religiously wrong
b) British Pakistani Men actually wants to marry someone from 'backyard' *the term they use for Pakistan* - because they think that there cousins in UK are 'used/abused'
c) British Pakistani Women atleast the majority of them are comfortable of marrying someone from Pakistan - they need servents

Re: # 6
It’s the media what blows these things out of all proportions, there are couple of cases of honour killing a year in the UK, considering there is a large muslim population that’s really not significant. What is really amazing is how majority of these girls go along with their parents wishes and marry their cousins in Pakistan, some of these girls are graduates, there is a girl living on my road she’s a doctor she married her cousin in Pakistan who’s only matric.

BTW the media has also highlighted domestic violence within the sikh community, with a release of a Film based on a true story, a young sikh woman kills her husband because she couldn’t take the violence no more.

Thanks for the review!

Would have liked some quoted passages as evidence of reading of this text.

"However, no book is perfect, and this one has a couple of tiny flaws which I noticed. One is that the writer's Islamophobia is too obvious and visible." Naqshbandi

And you expect us to spend our hard earned money to by this bigot's book and financially benefit him? Naqshbandi: lately I see in you the trend to promote works of anti-Muslim bigots on this website. What gives? It worries me.

nadeem aslam, is, by head and shoulders, the best writer of pakistani origin, writing in the english language in the world.......this is, perhaps, the best book ever authored, in english, by a author of pakistani origin.......

i finished this book a year back..........and loved reading it!! while reading i was totally mesmerized in the characters....whether it was kaukab,her daughter ujala....or her husband....each character is given its due fair...
good peice of work by Nadeem Aslam!!

Re: # 4 Aslam Bha-e-
yaar to me asians - and specially us Pakistanis are one of the most racist ppl ever .
There's this famous case - where one of the Pakistani Girl married a Jamacan Muslim and both were killed in Birmingham. It's not about race, nationality and even religion - its to do with culture.

This not either new or first time written about pakistani immigrant in U.k by PAKISTANI writer hem selves ..
Hanif quersishy who himself is gay and Ayub khan and they have two movies to there credit 'my beutiful laundrette And 'East & WESt' respectively .....

Re: # 2
my understanding of this honour killing is they have no problem has long as the boy is circumcised, is it in quran i wonder?.