This book didn't live up to its promise for me. It concerns Qayyam Gul, injured out of the British Indian Army at Ypres, who later crosses paths with Vivian Spencer, archaeologist, who during her work in Peshawar meets and teaches his younger brother. It's a story that promises much, looking at brotherhood, love, and the role of the British in twentieth century India. But the constant leaping from one strand of the story to another finally lost my concentration, and I finished by being somewhat disappointed. ( )

It’s a social drama book, a novel about the world.

I knew a little bit about first wave feminist intellectuals—because without that freedom, I would still be watching racist movies—but I had never really thought about the role of South Asia in the Great War. On the one hand, many colonial subjects of the European empires fought in World War One, and many were killed or maimed in battle—many more than you’d think, from looking at the pop culture depictions. On the other hand, the victory of the Allies would not really have been such a close call if Africa and Asia had had some clear reason, some solid benefit, to prefer the rule of the King of England to the Kaiser of Germany. The colonial soldiers arrived in the West to fight, and they were treated like prisoners to keep them away from Englishwomen. [On the actual battlefield there was some fellow feeling between the men, but the anti-mixed marriage prejudice took over at home much of the time.] Winning the war for British world supremacy: a blank check for broken bodies. Keeping your race pure by protecting white women from perfidious foreigners: priceless.

…. What a complex web of privilege and oppression many people are caught in.

…. Re: independence

—How many people died in the demonstrations?
—We were lucky; nobody got hurt. Well, one of the soldiers tripped over the bodies and hurt himself, but he almost deserved it—the klutz!
—The bodies?
—The natives, pumpkin, (said Little Englander Abroad).

…. That I suppose is the (legal) complaint, but it is a bit like reading Toni Morrison—a strange beauty.

…. Afterword: Another great theme of the book is the relationship between the middle class white researchers of an impoverished non-European region’s ancient past, and that place’s modern inhabitants—which relationship I wouldn’t pretend to understand now, having only refined it a little in a via negativa sort of way—that way where we know only a little, and only by knowing what is not—and what the precise negations are, I cannot really say. It is not really perforce a matter of bad will, you know. But what else it is, I cannot say.

This novel never captured me. I was never quite sure of the setting or the circumstances. I never knew the characters well enough to care about them. The best part for me was the last few chapters. ( )

Huh. I sat down to write this review and realized that I have very little to say about A God in Every Stone. Nothing stood out to me. The plot was okay, the characters were fine, the writing was solid. It is the beige of this year's Women's Bailey's Prize longlist. ( )

Another super ambitious book by Shamsie, this one about Peshawar just after WWI and then again in the 1930s and featuring an English archeologist, a young Pakistani boy with in interest in history and his older brother, a veteran of the British army who gets involved in anti-colonial politics once he returns to Pakistan. It doesn't all come together and I would have loved a street map but I really admire what Shamsie is trying to do. And you do want to know about Greco-Buddhist art because it's fascinating. ( )