Name: The Wasted Vigil

Author: Nadeem Aslam
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Fiction, Historical fiction, War/Military, Contemporary

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The author of Maps for Lost Lovers gives us a new novel--at once lyrical and blistering--about war in our time, told through the lives of five people who come together in post-9/11 Afghanistan.

Marcus, an English doctor whose progressive, outspoken Afghani wife was murdered by the Taliban, opens his home--itself an eerily beautiful monument to his losses--to the others: Lara, from St. Petersburg, looking for evidence of her soldier brother who disappeared decades before during the Soviet invasion; David, an American, a former spy who has seen his ideals turned inside out during his twenty-five years in Afghanistan; Casa, a young Afghani whose hatred of the West plunges him into the depths of zealotry; and James, the Special Forces soldier in whom David sees a dangerous revival of the unquestioning notions of right and wrong that he himself once held.

In mesmerizing prose, Nadeem Aslam reveals the complex ties--of love and desperation, pain and salvation, madness and clarity--that bind the characters. And through their stories he creates a timely and achingly intimate portrait of the "continuation of wars" that shapes our world.

In its radiant language, its depth of feeling, and its unflinching drama, The Wasted Vigil is a luminous work of fiction.
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