Maps for Lost Lovers

by Nadeem Aslam
Maps for Lost Lovers – In Brief

Chanda and Jugnu love each other dearly but are unable to marry until
Chanda’s husband can be persuaded to divorce her. Instead they set up
house together becoming the object of gossip and judgement for the
Muslim community of which they are a part. Their failure to return from
a trip to Pakistan eventually results in the arrest of Chanda’s brothers for
the couple’s murder. Jugnu’s brother Shamas, the respected director of
the local Community Relations Council, and his devout wife Kaukab find
their most cherished beliefs challenged as they try to cope with their
distress and the uncertainty which ripples throughout both their lives
and the tightly-knit community in which they live. In glittering prose
studded with gorgeous imagery, Maps for Lost Lovers traces the year
following the Jugnu and Chanda’s disappearance illuminating a world
which is known to many of us only through the headlines of the news-
papers we read.

Background

The many-layered bejewelled prose of Maps for Lost Lovers reflects

the dedication of Nadeem Aslam who spent eleven years writing this
penetrating yet compassionate novel, striving for each chapter to be ‘like
a Persian miniature’. So involved was Aslam in completing the book that
he did not find out about 9/11 until nine days after the event, a sharp
irony in view of the nature of the community which the novel portrays.

The son of a ‘politically committed’ film producer, Aslam spent the first
fifteen years of his life in Pakistan. His family settled in Huddersfield in
the early ‘80s where, thanks to his poor English, Aslam’s education was
largely slanted towards science. He was brought up in a cultured house-
hold, surrounded by art, music and books. His father, to whom the book
is dedicated, wrote poetry but was unable to pursue it as a career when
he took on the financial responsibilities of a family. Aslam pays homage to
his father’s talent in both Maps for Lost Lovers and his first novel,
Season of the Rainbirds, with the character of the poet Wamaq Saleem,
his father’s pen name. Once Aslam became fluent in English he found
himself turning to literature, reading widely from James Joyce to Michael
Ondaatje who he feels is a particular influence. Eventually he gave up his
biochemistry degree just months from graduating to become a writer.

In Maps for Lost Lovers Aslam decided not to tread the well-trodden
path of white racism but to explore relationships and tensions within a
Pakistani community. He did not name the town in which the novel is set
because ‘I wanted the reader to be as confused about his surroundings
as my characters – immigrants to this alien place – were’. Although he

Faber Book Club Guides: Maps for Lost Lovers

would argue that the novel is not a polemic it does challenge the way
in which the Koran is interpreted by some Muslims. His anger against
‘holy men’ in some communities is apparent at several points in the
novel, most notably the fatal beating of a young Muslim girl to rid her
of djinns and the protection of a cleric caught abusing a child. He has
criticised the idea that ill-educated clerics should be allowed to teach
Islam to children saying ‘If a person isn’t allowed to teach children in
schools without a diploma, without a degree, without training, why on
earth should we let people loose on impressionable minds in religious
schools without screening them first?’

He is keen to point out the importance of tackling the roots of extrem-

ism and of the necessity of Islamic communities confronting terrorism:
‘We must keep an eye on the mosques – if a youngster is disillusioned
he should not have the opportunity to fall into the hands of the extrem-
ist mullah – let him channel his disappointment and make great works
of art.’ But this is a novel in which anger is balanced with compassion
and tenderness for many of its characters, in particular for Kaukab
who deludes herself that Pakistan is an earthly paradise but who is
wracked by the reactions of her children to her piety, and for Shamas,
an educated liberal man who endures great pain and humiliation.

Despite his concerns and criticisms Aslam remains immensely proud

of his heritage. Asked ‘If someone in Pakistan called you a Pakistani
writer would you have a problem with that?’ he replied ‘I'd be thrilled
if someone in Pakistan claimed me. It would be an honour.’

About the Author

Nadeem Aslam was born in

Gujranwala, Pakistan in 1966
and moved with his family to
Huddersfield when he was a
teenager. He studied biochemistry
at the University of Manchester,
but left to become a writer. His
first novel, Season of the
Rainbirds, won a Betty Trask
Award and was shortlisted for both
the 1993 Mail on Sunday/John
Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the
Whitbread First Novel Award.
Maps for Lost Lovers won the
2005 Encore Award and the 2005
Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize.

Faber Book Club Guides: Maps for Lost Lovers

 For Discussion

• ‘Only one name has been accepted by every group, remaining unchanged. It’s the name of the
town itself, Dasht-e-Tanhaii. The Wilderness of Solitude. The Desert of Loneliness.’ (page 29).
What has made each immigrant group from the subcontinent accept this name? How appropriate
does it seem for Shamas and Kaukab’s lives there?

• What is Shamas’ attitude to his religion? How does it compare with his wife’s beliefs? How do
these differences influence the way that they look at the world? Why do both Shamas and Jugnu
differ so much from the rest of their community?

• ‘His “beautiful wife”, he called her, “the heroine of the story of his life”’ (page 56). How has Shamas’
and Kaukab’s marriage changed? What has brought about that change? What are the tensions and
complexities within their relationship? How do each of them view marriage and its function?

• ‘She knows that the truth that her daughter had suffered would cause Kaukab more pain than
the lie that she had selfishly and scandalously abandoned someone loving’ (page 97). What does
Mah-Jabin’s restraint tell us about her character and about her mother? What are the contradictions
in their relationship? What difficulties do Charag, Mah-Jabin and Ujala face as the children of immi-
grants? How do they overcome those difficulties?

• What is the irony of Suraya’s position? How does it compare with Chanda’s?

• ‘They – more than the men – attempt to make a new world. And, in every poem and every story,
they fail. But by striving they become part of the universal story of human hope’ (page 192). How
does the Sufi portrayal of women differ from the treatment of women in Dasht-e-Tanhaii, and in
Pakistan? How do the female characters in Maps for Lost Lovers react to that treatment?
To what extent can it be argued that the women are both victims and victimisers?

• ‘What mattered was not what you yourself knew to have actually happened, but what other people
thought happened’ (page 158). How important are gossip, rumour and what other people think in the
novel? What part does it play in the misfortunes that afflict various characters?

• ‘And just now on the bus, she was no doubt unable to face him with her guilt and had lied about it’
(page 287). How culpable is Kiran in the murders of Chanda and Jugnu? Who else is to blame
besides those who perpetrated the act? What motivates those perpetrators?

• ‘You don’t understand what things are like back there for most of us’ (page 219). How does the
Pakistan that the young illegal immigrant is fleeing compare with the Pakistan which Kaukab yearns
for? What does ‘home’ mean to the immigrants, and to their children?

• The novel’s first chapter contains a vivid image of nineteen newly hatched, gorgeously hued male
Great Peacock Moths searching out a lone female. What do you think Nadeem Aslam means by this
image? How important is symbolism in the book and how does Aslam use it in constructing the novel
and its characters?

• What is the significance of the novel’s title? Who else besides Chanda and Jugnu are lost lovers?

• If you are not a Muslim how does the world depicted in Maps for Lost Lovers compare with any
preconceptions that you may have had? If you are a Muslim, how does it compare with your own
experience?

• What does Maps for Lost Lovers have to say about multiculturalism? How are relationships
between the different groups from the subcontinent depicted? How are white people portrayed in
the novel?

Faber Book Club Guides: Maps for Lost Lovers

Resources

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0CE7D91030F931A15756C0A9639C8B63
Review by the writer Akash Kapur published in The New York Times

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/17/AR2005051701289.html
Review by Ron Charles published in The Washington Post

www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;sessionid=QZGYLRHQEUEELQFIQMFCM5WAVCBQYJVC?xm
l=/arts/2004/07/11/boasl11.xml&sSheet=/arts/2004/07/11/bomain.html
Review by Jasper Rees published in the Daily Telegraph

www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml;jsessionid=AO2JUDS2F5NITQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=
/arts/2004/06/20/boaslam.xml
Interview by Jasper Rees published in the Daily Telegraph

www.threemonkeysonline.com/threemon_article.php?id=280
Interview by Michael O’Connor published at the Three Monkeys Online website

www.newsline.com.pk/newsJul2004/bookjul2.htm
Interview by the novelist Kamila Shamsie published at Newsline.com

Suggested Further Reading

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

The Romance Reader by Pearl Abraham
A Married Woman by Manju Kapur
The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
Small Island by Andrea Levy
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
Kartography by Kamila Shamsie

Other books by Nadeem Aslam

Season of the Rainbirds

Faber Book Club Guides: Maps for Lost Lovers

Other Reading Guides . . .
In the Fold Rachel Cusk
The Poisonwood Bible Barbara Kingsolver
The Remains of the Day Kazuo Ishiguro
Mrs Fytton’s Country Life Mavis Cheek
Headlong Michael Frayn
Amongst Women John McGahern
Snow Orhan Pamuk
Real Stephanie Merritt
The Observations Jane Harris
The Bell Jar Sylvia Plath
The Confessions of Max Tivoli Andrew Sean Greer

and more to follow . . .

Available to download from www.faber.co.uk