The Wasted Vigil

From the author of Maps for Lost Lovers (Extraordinary . . . It deepens our knowledge of life--The New York Review of Books), 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 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 in the Soviet invasion; David, an American and former spy who has seen his ideals turned inside out; 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, Aslam reveals the complex ties--of love and desperation, pain and salvation, madness and clarity--that bind these individuals. And through their stories he gives us a portrait both timely and achingly intimate of the continuation of wars that shapes our world. In its radiant language and unflinching drama, The Wasted Vigil is a luminous work of fiction.