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    The Scatter Here Is Too Great

    The Scatter Here Is Too Great

    by Bilal Tanweer


    eBook

    $3.99
    $3.99

    Customer Reviews

      ISBN-13: 9780062304445
    • Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
    • Publication date: 08/05/2014
    • Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
    • Format: eBook
    • Pages: 224
    • File size: 484 KB

    Bilal Tanweer was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. His fiction, poetry, and translations have appeared in various international journals, including Granta, Vallum, The Caravan, and Words Without Borders. He was selected as a Granta New Voice in 2011 and was named an Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. He lives in Lahore, Pakistan.

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    A vivid and intricate novel-in-stories, The Scatter Here Is Too Great explores the complicated lives of ordinary people whose fates unexpectedly converge after a deadly bomb blast at the Karachi train station: an old communist poet; his wealthy, middle-aged son; a young man caught in an unpleasant, dead-end job; a girl who spins engaging tales to conceal her heartbreak; and a grief-stricken writer, who struggles to make sense of this devastating tragedy.

    Bilal Tanweer reveals the pain, loneliness, and longing of these characters and celebrates the power of the written word to heal lives and communities plagued by violence. Elegantly weaving together different voices into a striking portrait of a city and its people, The Scatter Here Is Too Great is a tale as vibrant and varied in its characters, passions, and idiosyncrasies as the city itself.

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    Publishers Weekly
    06/30/2014
    The edgy account of Karachi life given in Tanweer’s stylish but flawed debut resembles a Pakistani La Ronde, so gracefully does the narrative waltz from one character’s life to another. The difference here is that most of the people we meet are connected not by love, but by a bomb blast. In one of the best sections of the novel, an unnamed boy and his sister, Aapa, are sent to live with their grandmother. When Aapa’s romance with a local boy is discovered, shame and calamity befalls the family. The narrative then jumps into the life of Sadeq, who is involved in the dangerous world of auto repossession and gradually revealed as Aapa’s lover—except the encounter that so disrupted her life is just a blip in his. Later, Tanweer follows Akbar, a young paramedic undergoing a spiritual crisis after witnessing the bombing. Although all the pieces fit, and many are beautifully written (the opening sequence, about a bus ride the boy and his father take to the seashore, is masterful), the overall thrust of the narrative is unclear. Nonetheless, this poetic novel-in-stories is an invaluable portrait of modern-day Karachi. (Aug.)
    Booklist
    An eloquent, moving debut.
    New York Journal of Books
    A thoughtful and original book.
    Washington Independent Review of Books
    The Scatter Here Is Too Great [offers] nuanced characters, rich textures of fragmented experiences, and a distinct writing style. . . . One hell of a good read.
    The Guardian
    A timely and unconventional debut. . . . Powerful. . . . Its beautiful fragments coalesce to form an elaborate, haunting portrait of urban Pakistan, one that is rich with acute sociological detail and subtle existential contemplation.
    The Wall Street Journal
    A vivid picture of a city blown to pieces by years of violence. . . . From his shards of stories he reconstructs a vibrant, hopeful panorama.
    Alaa Al Aswany
    This is a beautiful, deeply powerful novel. Tanweer is a talented writer who manages with simple, elegant phrases to draw a very touching, humane portrait with real characters that can almost breathe on paper.
    Ben Marcus
    Bilal Tanweer has written a modern love letter -- furious, passionate, playful, and longing -- to Pakistan. And in his brilliant hands it becomes the universal story of home.
    Kamila Shamsie
    Bilal Tanweer uses his many gifts as a writer to evoke a Karachi of humor, violence, frustration, love -- and breathtaking stories at every turn. A wonderful debut.
    Nadeem Aslam
    A superb and genuinely exciting debut.... He assembles a story of Karachi through lovingly-collected fragments. By the end of this book he had made me see that certain things are more beautiful and valuable for having been broken.
    Mohammed Hanif
    A beautiful debut, and a blood-soaked love letter to Karachi.
    Lorraine Adams
    In one slim volume of interconnected stories Bilal Tanweer creates characters so deftly alive they illuminate the world’s strangest and least-charted megacity in all its soiled and yes, hilarious, splendor.

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