For his loyalty and skill in battle, Alexander the Great’s Persian rival, Darius, honoured one of his generals, Scylax, with a precious silver coronet. The story behind this artefact intrigues a young British archaeologist by the name of Vivian Spencer who attempts to unearth it in Peshawar (the ancient name for the city was Caspatyrus). Although she doesn’t succeed in discovering it personally, a young Peshawari protégé of hers, Najeeb Gul, does, and the book is evenly apportioned between his story, that of Vivian’s, and Najeeb’s proud, but intrinsically gentle, older brother Qayyum.

The book is divided into two parts; the first is set briefly in Britain and then Peshawar circa 1915 and the action of the second half takes place in 1930. There is a marked difference in the authorial tone between the two halves. Part of this is no doubt due to the intense emotional energy Shamsie strives to depict as she frenetically, but sincerely, sketches the action of the uprising and the panicked British response to it. Until I read Shamsie’s book I didn’t fully understand the term “using a sledgehammer to kill a fly,” but I certainly do now. In a subtle but unmistakable way, this contrast informs the reader about the inherently divided aspects of the author’s own considerable talent. The Shamsie who crafts the first book belongs to the world of Mary Renault, and one gets the impression that the former would be completely at home writing a historical novel about Ancient Greece and / or Rome in the intelligent mode of the entertaining Colleen McCullough. At times there is a mythical and dream-like quality to Shamsie’s work, reminiscent of Frank Herbert’s Dune. And yet, perhaps both social responsibility and personal conscience pull Shamsie towards painstakingly delineating the valiant struggle of some of the subcontinent’s proudest people, against the established (but declining) Raj.

Does the book suffer as a result of this dichotomy? Many would argue that it does not, although it is not immediately clear what saves the narrative from a type of detrimental fragmentation. On further reflection, though, I believe the answer lies in the strength of Shamsie’s characters. She reserves her energies for only those characters who truly matter — not just to the plot, but to her per se.

Najeeb’s brother, Qayyum, loses an eye while fighting as part of the British forces at Ypres, and is honourably discharged. That Shamsie is a mature writer, and thus no stranger to fine character development, comes across repeatedly as we witness Qayyum’s anguish over his mutilated face, while simultaneously observing that the sentiments portrayed do not detract an iota from his masculinity. Najeeb’s love of learning also emerges as remarkably authentic; although (in the first half of the book) he has reached puberty, he thinks nothing of spending time with a modern Western woman in order to acquire knowledge. The wholesome, but nonetheless socially dangerous intimacy between them is delicately handled by the author, and carries over into the latter half of the book, by which point Najeeb has reached adulthood. But perhaps it is Vivian Spencer who remains, paradoxically, Shamsie’s most understandable yet most surprising creation. For it is through her, i.e. by using her as a lens, that the reader gets a genuinely sympathetic view of the plight of the Pakhtuns, and the indifference of the English (which was ultimately a greater hazard for the Raj than for the people they were oppressing). Situated in the period where Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement had spread its admirable tentacles far and wide, Shamsie’s novel is balanced, but uncompromisingly realistic, when it comes to critiquing the English.

Not for Shamsie the cheap thrills that have made every fictional artefact in a Dan Brown novel carry a price-tag of millions. The artefact is discovered, but then “lost” again in a turn of plot that makes perfect sense to any reader who respects that the novel is less about success and more about the love that underlies family ties. Readers who pick up the book hoping for an elegantly worded thriller that will merge the disparate strands of ancient history with a modern mania for Indiana Jones-style discovery are bound to be disappointed. Shamsie’s authorial concerns are far nobler and more moral than that, and the reader can accordingly expect surprising rewards. For instance, in the fast-paced final quarter of the book, one gets truly caught up in wondering whether Najeeb has been killed (like tens of other Pakhtuns, including a woman) while in the thick of action. One keeps heaving a sigh of relief as one finds that every time the reader is convinced that Najeeb has finally been dispatched to his Maker, one is proved wrong.

Shamsie’s novel does turn out to be a page-turner but in a classy sense of the word, and even Bloomsbury’s decision to adorn the cover with a graceful vine of fig-leaves, as opposed to an eye-catching coronet, emphasises the understated nature of the mystery concerned. The author never lets us forget that a “cold pastoral” artefact (like John Keats’ Grecian urn) is ultimately not what matters — and that found artefacts can never replace lost lives.

The reviewer is Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and Liberal Arts at the Institute of Business Administration

A God in Every Stone

(Novel)

By Kamila Shamsie

Bloomsbury, India

ISBN 9781408847206

312 pp.