Kamilah Shamsie
Bloomsbury
Otago Daily Times, February 21st 2023
Kamilah Shamsie’s powerful eighth novel is, as the title suggests, the portrait of female friendship.
The story opens in Karachi in 1988, when Zahra Ali and Maryam Khan are 14 and revelling in their newly-realised ability to draw the attention of the male gaze until an ill-advised decision awakens them to their vulnerability as women and changes the course of both their lives.
We then jump forward 20 years to London, where Zahra is the director of the Centre for Civil Liberties, and Maryam is one of Britain’s top venture capitalists. Their bond remains as strong as ever, politics regardless, until an unexpected reunion sparks an argument in which they discover the dark side of friendship: that those who know us most intimately also know – or assume to know – truths we don’t want to admit to ourselves.
The emotional intensity of the first half of the story, which reminded me of My Brilliant Friend, overshadows the second, in which British deportation policy takes centre stage. But this imbalance is mitigated by Zahra and Maryam’s climactic confrontation, and the novel ends with the recognition that a true friend will “[despite knowing your every flaw]…choose to stand with you and by you through everything”.
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