Uzma Aslam Khan was born in Lahore and grew up in Karachi. She is the author of three novels, including Trespassing, which was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize. She teaches literature at Hampshire College.
"[F]uses the romantic, the spiritual and the political...the
characters, the poetry and the philosophical questions she raises
are rendered with a power and beauty that make this novel linger in
the mind and heart."
Like her better-known contemporaries...Uzma Aslam Khan comes from a
younger generation of Pakistani authors born and raised in the
disrupted decades of the 1980s and 90s whose fiction looks back to
those earlier times and attempts to re-examine the turbulent
history of their country. ... Her third novel, 'The Geometry of
God', describes the psychological effects of General Zia-ul-Haq's
campaign to Islamize knowledge'. ... As in her previous work, Aslam
Khan deploys several narrators, both male and female...The
narrators offer partial perspectives, which obscure, elucidate and
expand our understanding of the events described, not only the
machinations that result in Zahoor's downfall, but also the
developments in their everyday lives which shape their characters.
Yet, it is above all, the two female perspectives...which make the
novel worth reading. ... Amal offers insights into modern Pakistan,
but it is the abstract perspectives offered by her sister, Mehwish,
a character who sees the world with her inner eye, tastes its
truths and tells them slant", that are the most original and
captivating. ... we become attuned to her quietly anarchic
voice..complex...inventive..."
Elegant, sensuous and fiercely intelligent, 'The Geometry of God'
takes an argument that is in danger of becoming stale- that of
fundamentalism vs. free thinking among Muslims- and animates it in
a wonderfully inventive story that pits science against politics
and the freedom of women against the insecurities of men.
Uzma Aslam Khan, a fearless young Pakistani novelist, writes about
what lies beneath the surface- ancient fossils embedded in desert
hillsides, truths hidden inside the language of everyday life. In
'The Geometry of God' (Clockroot), set in 1970s and '80s Pakistan,
a young math whiz called Noman writes pseudoscience for his
father's cohort of religious extremists while secretly gravitating
toward a diehard evolutionist and his adventurous granddaughter,
Amal. As faith and reason fatally collide, Amal's blind younger
sister, Mehwish, tries to decipher a world she cannot see but
understands better than most. Khan's urgent defense of free thought
and action- often galvanized by strong-minded, sensuous women-
courses through every page of this gorgeously complex book; but
what really draws the reader in is the way Mehwish taste-tests the
words she hears, as if they were pieces of fruit, and probes the
meaning of human connection in a culture of intolerance, but also
of stubborn hope.--Cathleen Medwick, O magazine
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