Review: A God in Every Stone - Kamila Shamsie

Indian Soldiers at Brighton Pavilion

The Royal Pavilion in Brighton is best known nowadays as a gaudy seaside attraction, with its kitsch domes and spires and louche reputation, but in 1914 it served a more practical use as a hospital for wounded soldiers from the Imperial Indian Army. Around 14,000 Indian and Gurkha soldiers were treated in Brighton between 1914 - 16, either at the Pavilion itself or in a converted workhouse nearby. The makeshift hospital became a valuable propaganda tool, a symbol of 'the benevolence of the British Empire to its colonial troops', as the Pavilion museum website puts it. Photographs of the convalescing men sitting outside the royal palace were turned into a book, and 20,000 copies were distributed in India, with text in English, Urdu and Gurmukhi. This incident of Imperial history was the subject of Vipers, Kamila Shamsie's contribution to Granta's Best of Young British Writers edition last year, which followed Qayyum Gul, a Pashtun officer who is invalided to Brighton after losing and eye at the Battle of Ypres in 1915.

For Qayyum the war is the first time he, as an Indian, interacts on an equal footing with British soldiers. However, after his injury, he discovers the limits of British gratitude. At first, the Indian soldiers in Brighton are treated well by nurses who ‘asked nothing about a soldier’s caste or religion to make him feel inferior but understood enough about these things to have nine different kitchens where food could be prepared separately for each group’, but following an official panic over the close relationships developing between the soldiers and the nurses who attended them, Qayyum finds his movements curtailed, his status as a second-class citizen reasserted. The injured soldiers, initially grateful to the 'Emperor-King' for his benevolence in opening his palace to them, realise they are still resented and feared by the order they are supposed to be fighting for.

When Granta 123 was released, much was made of the global nature of the list, which was not confined to the authors' birthplaces. Many of the writers were dealing with issues of globalisation and multiculturalism in their work, with even the likes of Ned Beauman and Adam Foulds creating narratives that took place beyond Britain’s borders. Vipers gave a sense of historical context to the modern day issues of global identity explored elsewhere in the collection, investigating the first stirrings of the Independence movement in India, and the development of a post-colonial culture. A year on, Shamsie has delivered the novel which Vipers was extracted from, and it doesn’t disappoint at all.

Although it weighs in at a very reasonable 288pp, A God In Every Stone has the feel of an epic. Shamsie has created an intricate narrative in which limited resources are utilised to great effect; the action is limited to 16 years, between 1914 and 1930, but expands its scope by frequently referring back to events which occurred during the time of Alexander the Great. Likewise, although the novel focusses on three main characters, the streets of Peshawar provide a multitude of additional voices, particularly as the author boldly shifts perspective in the novel’s final chapter, an audacious decision which adds to the drama of the piece.

Qayyum Gul's story runs in parallel with that of Vivian Spencer, the daughter of a wealthy middle class English family and a keen archaeologist. Vivian, or Viv, is something of a tomboy, raised by her father to be ‘son and daughter both – female in manners but male in intellect’. As the novel opens, she is assisting on a dig in Labraunda, supervised by family friend Tashin Bey, an Armenian, and featuring a diverse group of archaeologists, including Turks and Germans. In this setting, Bey opens her mind to a world beyond England’s rigid social structure, but the outbreak of war brings the project to an end; later, his death at the hands of the Turkish authorities will act as a reminder of the terrible fate of his country during the final stages of the Ottoman Empire. Back in London, Viv placates her father by working as a nurse, but feels more out of place at home than she did in Turkey, ‘an Englishwoman in a Class A hospital who wanted nothing more than a refuge amidst antiquity’.

Viv and Qayyum are both disillusioned by their experiences in Britain, which Qayyum realises is ‘just a pinprick’; both head back to Peshawar at the first opportunity, Qayyum to provide for his family and Viv in search of a lost treasure of antiquity hinted at in a letter from Tashin Bey. Their experiences have changed them, made them more recognisably modern. Qayyum is now ‘a Pashtun who had left his tribe behind in a gas cloud, in a trench, in the sightline of a thousand machine guns’, while Viv is able to assert herself more freely than in the past because ‘the war had sloughed off so many rules of behaviour that no-one seemed to know anymore what counted as unacceptable behaviour in women’.

Back in Peshawar, they follow different paths. Viv throws herself into the world of antiquities, hoping that she might yet ‘find a Herodotus in this city with its Street of Storytellers and its centuries of Greek influence’. Qayyum, meanwhile, channels his disillusionment into working for Gandhi’s non-violent independence movement. The final strand of the narrative focusses on Qayyum’s younger brother, Najeeb, who becomes Viv’s pupil, learning about his city’s past from the Englishwoman. Viv and Qayyum’s battle for influence over the young man mirrors the political struggle between Empire and the independence movement, and Shamsie brings both of these conflicts together in the novel’s finale, which invokes the Qissa Khwani Bazaar Massacre of 1930.

Shamsie’s main concern is the identity the people of Peshawar will adopt as they move away from the influence of the Empire, and she skilfully reflects this in her discussion of the main characters. Qayyum, a proud soldier, finds himself reduced by his wound to a ‘partial man’ who will ‘never be admired, only pitied’. He is caught between worlds, proud of his experiences in Europe but also suspicious of 'Western values' following his treatment by the officials of Empire. Non-violent protest is his synthesis of these conflicting desires. A section in which Viv dons a burqa to cross into areas where Englishwomen aren’t supposed to tread is also revealing: ‘the burqa took away her very English right to be eccentric. Now she couldn’t stop and stare, point to things that struck her as unusual, ask questions, enter all-male domains, expect to be treated with a certain deference (she’d never known she’d expected this) simply by virtue of her race’. She wants to identify with the inhabitants of the vibrant city she loves, is but uncomfortable giving up her privileges; although she values her own freedom, she ridicules her suffragette sister, and is loyal to the idea of Empire. Her attempts to educate Najeeb are no doubt sincerely meant, but smack of 'civilising the natives'. Najeeb represents the first attempt to combine the values espoused by Qayyum and Viv, his confusion reflected the chaos of the end of Empire.

This is a hugely impressive novel on every level, brilliantly plotted, always engaging, and filled with excellent prose. In particular, Shamsie deserves recognition for her handling of battle scenes. Adam Foulds was praised for his depictions of battle in In The Wolf’s Mouth, but if anything I found Shamsie’s account of Ypres, and a night spent in No Man’s Land, even more affecting. She captures the reckless heroism, camaraderie and squalor of war as well as the best eyewitness accounts, and is also able to effectively psychologise the survivors. Elsewhere, the writing is clear, elegant and measured, giving the book a classic feel.

A God in Every Stone is a rich, vivid, ambitious and rewarding novel, justifying Shamsie’s reputation as a leading modern writer. Her previous novel, Burnt Shadows, was bizarrely missed off the Booker longlist – I suspect this won’t be.