The Wasted Vigil by Nadeem Aslam

The Wasted Vigil

Nadeem Aslam

A disparate group of characters linked through a common search for truth, identity, love and closure on the past, come together in an Afghan landscape that is both beautiful and scarred. The telling is harrowing and haunting in equal measure as the book's wounded characters are revealed through a narrative that hits hard.

Extract
'A daughter, a wife, a grandson', Marcus had been saying earlier. 'You could say that this place took away all that I had.' She was sitting beside him on the bed. 'I could so easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about who thought too lovingly of other races and civilisations of the world, who left his own country in the West, to set up home among them in the East and was ruined as a result, paying dearly for his mistake . . . so it is that we make links out of separations.'
Parallels
  • A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali by Gil Courtemanche
  • The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
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Violence
Explicit sexual content