Broken Verses - Softcover

Fourteen years ago, famous Pakistani activist Samina Akram disappeared. Two years earlier, her lover, Pakistan's greatest poet, was beaten to death by government thugs. In present-day Karachi, her daughter Aasmaani has just discovered a letter in the couple's private code-a letter that could only have been written recently.

Aasmaani is thirty, single, drifting from job to job. Always left behind whenever Samina followed the Poet into exile, she had assumed that her mother's disappearance was simply another abandonment. Then, while working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmaani runs into an old friend of Samina's who gives her the first letter, then many more. Where could the letters have come from? And will they lead her to her mother?

Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a sharp, thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan, a carefully coded mystery, and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how we forgive a mother who leaves.

In 1986 Pakistan's greatest poet was found brutally murdered, beaten to death by government thugs. Two years later his lover, blazing beauty and fearless activist Samina Akram, disappeared. Her daughter, Aasmani, has always assumed her mother abandoned her--since she had left so many times before, following the Poet into exile.
But now, working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmani runs into an old friend of her mother's who hands her a letter written--recently--in the Poet and Samina's secret code. As more letters arrive, Aasmani becomes certain that the Poet is still alive, and that he will lead her to Samina, if only she can find him. Despite menacing signs, the disbelief of her family, and the worries of her new lover, Aasmani decodes the letters and searches for their source. But if she manages to locate it, what will she find?
Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a sharp, thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan, a carefully coded mystery, and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how to forgive a mother who leaves.

Praise for Kartography
"This 30-year-old has been described as a young Anita Desai, and her third book . . . is worth all the prepublication fuss."--Harper's Bazaar

"A gorgeous novel."--Los Angeles Times

"[Shamsie] packs her story with the playful evidence of her high-flying intelligence."--San Francisco Chronicle

KAMILA SHAMSIE is the author of four novels. She has been twice short-listed for the John Llewelyn Rhys Award and is the recipient of two prizes from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan. She lives in London and Karachi and serves as a visiting professor of English at Hamilton College.