Review
Reading
The Geometry of God was an experience of total immersion, not because I read it in two days but because of the power of the writing and the voices of its four main characters. I dreamed about the place, the story and the characters both nights after reading, although modern-day Pakistan is a country and culture almost completely alien to me. Uzma Aslam Khan has created exactly what I desire from fiction: to be transported to another world where the problems and rewards of living get worked out in a parallel but utterly different matrix to the world I know.
Each character must move outside of familial expectations in order to follow and realize his or her interests and passions. As the women make choices and take risks, the men must decide how love fits in with political and professional pressures. In a culture increasingly enmeshed in modern global...
Beyond the Book
Listening to and looking at Pakistan
This book is Uzma Aslam
Khan's third novel. One of her goals as a woman and a Pakistani is to undo formulaic
assumptions about her homeland as well as to aid in the struggle for self- ownership,
self-representation, and intellectual recognition of women. She writes passionately
about this purpose in her essay, "Women
and Fiction Today."
She also urges her readers to understand the complexity that is Pakistan today by first admitting our preconceptions about it and then being willing to shed them; to listen and to look. Instead of only relying on our major news outlets, what should we listen to? Where should we look?
