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.
The Scatter Here Is Too Great
eBook
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ISBN-13:
9780062304445
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
- Publication date: 08/05/2014
- Sold by: HARPERCOLLINS
- Format: eBook
- Pages: 224
- File size: 484 KB
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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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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.)