A powerful exploration of the clash between society, friendship and power - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize.
Sometimes it was as though the forty years of friendship between them was just a lesson in the unknowability of other people... Maryam and Zahra. In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities.
Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome.
Zahra and Maryam. In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways.
Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it... Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision?
Paperback
Kamila Shamsie
336 pages
H: 216mm W: 135mm