Author(s): Nadeem Aslam

Fiction

In an unnamed town in England Jugnu and his lover Chanda have disappeared. Rumours abound in the close-knit Pakistani community, and then on a snow-covered January morning Chanda's brothers are arrested for their murder. Maps for Lost Lovers tells the story of the next twelve months. What follows is an unravelling of all that is sacred to Jugnu's brother and sister-in-law, Shamas and Kaukab. As the seasons pass Kaukab tries desperately to maintain her Islamic piety as she struggles to come to terms with the double murder and its corrosive effect on her family. Maps for Lost Lovers opens the heart of a family at the crossroads of culture, community, nationality and religion and expresses their pain, longing and desires in a language that is arrestingly poetic, a language that also gives vivid and beautiful life to the landscape, the light, the insects, the birds.