Maps for Lost Lovers (2004)

The prose is rich but too many similes make it difficult to get to the point. Story itself is gripping. Though perhaps the Muslim orthodoxy part is overdone as it is everywhere you look in the book. ( )

Deeply sad saga of how people can use a religion to slice hearts again and again. ( )

I feel guilty for marking this book so low, so I do so with a disclaimer: I acknowledge that this is a wonderful book, but there were some things which hit my buttons and made me dislike it. I found every single character's deep level of self-pity irksome. This was something which only occurred to me towards the end, but there was something else which really did annoy me. The imagery was just ridiculous sometimes..I know what in writings by those from India, Pakistan, the sub-continent in general, there is rich imagery to be found and this is something which can show cultural ties at their best. However when describing something as looking like the freckles on a doll's fingers...I start to wonder exactly what the reasoning is for simply seeming to choose the most obscure similie possible in any particular situation. This is not to say that some metaphors were not masterful, carrying meaning linked through the book for example, but some were just ludicrous, over-the-top and tiresome.

Really, it is a great book, I'm sure you'll find high praise in many other reviews which I would not disagree with, but personally I found it hard to see through a veil of irritation. ( )

Great writing - heavy but very good ( )

A beautiful book, but a little over the top - paring it down would have strengthened it. I wonder whether the floweriness of the writing is partly due to the influence of Urdu...Aslam arrived in the UK at the age of 14. I believe that the story is largely based on true life events.
Its beauty is in the loving: mostly painful love - one feels with characters.
This book is also important because of what it teaches about the separate world of Islam. I had no idea of what it does to women, still today, in a modern Western state: one may see a woman in a burka and fail to understand the implications.
The impact this book had on me is similar to that of the movie Osama, about the Taleban in Afghanistan, focussing on women's lives.
Nadeem Aslam spoke here recently (in Wellington, New Zealand). His kindness and intelligence were impressive. He also gave out an aura of virtue, however strange that may sound. He was promoting a subsequent book, The Wasted Vigil (more magical, I liked it less, but it is still a good book - about life and events in Aghanistan.) ( )