Kamila Shamsie’s latest novel chronicles the friendship of two women from their early teens through to middle age. Zahra is the daughter of a sports journalist and Maryam is due to inherit her father’s luxury leather goods business. We first meet them when they are 14-year-olds in 1980s Karachi hanging out at each other’s houses and obsessing over school cliques, boys and their love of Jackie Collins novels and George Michael. Humming in the background is the new political dawn represented by Benazir Bhutto after the death of the military dictator General Zia in a plane crash. Near the end of the school year, an impulsive moment at a party celebrating a democratic Pakistan has far-reaching consequences and leads to Maryam being packed off to boarding school.
The book then jumps to 2019, when our protagonists are in their 40s and living very different lives in London – Zahra is head of a civil liberties organisation and thorn in the side of the government, while Maryam is a successful venture capitalist. Despite their differing values, the pair remain close, meeting every Sunday for long walks on Primrose Hill, though their friendship is put to the test when a figure reappears from their past.
