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This document provides a summary of the novel "Thinner than Skin" by Uzma Aslam Khan. It discusses how the novel uses vivid imagery and blends modern and ancient stories. It describes two main storylines - one about a nomadic woman named Maryam who has no place to call home, and one about a young Pakistani man named Sadir living in America who returns to Pakistan. The stories converge in a moment of tragedy when Maryam's daughter drowns. Sadir struggles being separated from his girlfriend and must learn to let go. A predominant image in the novel is that of the eye and camera, as Sadir is a nature photographer who struggles in America but must face reality without his camera in
This document provides a summary of the novel "Thinner than Skin" by Uzma Aslam Khan. It discusses how the novel uses vivid imagery and blends modern and ancient stories. It describes two main storylines - one about a nomadic woman named Maryam who has no place to call home, and one about a young Pakistani man named Sadir living in America who returns to Pakistan. The stories converge in a moment of tragedy when Maryam's daughter drowns. Sadir struggles being separated from his girlfriend and must learn to let go. A predominant image in the novel is that of the eye and camera, as Sadir is a nature photographer who struggles in America but must face reality without his camera in
This document provides a summary of the novel "Thinner than Skin" by Uzma Aslam Khan. It discusses how the novel uses vivid imagery and blends modern and ancient stories. It describes two main storylines - one about a nomadic woman named Maryam who has no place to call home, and one about a young Pakistani man named Sadir living in America who returns to Pakistan. The stories converge in a moment of tragedy when Maryam's daughter drowns. Sadir struggles being separated from his girlfriend and must learn to let go. A predominant image in the novel is that of the eye and camera, as Sadir is a nature photographer who struggles in America but must face reality without his camera in
Thinner than Skin By Uzma Aslam Khan, Fourth Estate, Rs
499 In Uzma Aslam Khans new novel, mountain peaks are windows in a door, vices hitch a ride in the bells o mountain !oats, thou!hts scatter like moonseed, horses are win!s to the world, owls to the ne"t, and !laciers mate, witnessed by silence# It is a beautiul novel where almost every word has a taste and a colour, which e"pand in circles in the readers mind# $odern lives are woven in with old le!ends, pa!an rituals are carried over into days o $uslim belie, the city impin!es on desolate, or!otten countries, the %est makes inroads into the &ast and is aced with the impenetrable# The plot, i there is one at all, is in the loatin! ima!es' therein lies the stren!th and the weakness o the novel# There are two distin!uishable strands runnin! parallel here# (ne o them involves $aryam, a woman o the )u**ar tribe, who traverses the plains and the mountains o northern +akistan, her nomadic blood resistin! the idea o settlin! down and the State makin! sure that she can call no place her home# The other is about ,adir, a youn! +akistani livin! in America, who has to !o back to the land o his ori!in because his !irlriend, -arhana, o )erman.+akistani parenta!e, /lon!ed or a country0# The stories o $aryam and ,adir conver!e in a moment o disaster when $aryams dau!hter drowns# Thereater, there are only shards o lie that are never pieced to!ether a!ain# $aryams ancient spirit 1 stretchin! beyond her own lie into that o her ancestors, who have rou!hed it out like her in the wilderness 1 is able to cope with the tra!edy better than ,adir# 2ost in the mountains, separated orever rom -arhana, ,adir has to become a naturalized nomad to learn the meanin! o lettin! !o# $eanwhile, on the olden Silk 3oute, which is the novels settin!, lie !oes on4 5hina continues to encroach upon +akistani territory while +akistanis, Uzbeks, 3ussians, 5hinese and A!hans, each i!htin! or an ima!inary homeland, or!et their dierences everyday in the interests o trade# The predominant ima!e in all this is that o the eye and its kin, the window or the camera# ,adir is a nature photo!rapher who cannot succeed in America because /a Sheikh must be a war photo!rapher o the %ild &ast6 7e must wow the world not with the assurance o !race# 7e must wow the world with the assurance o horror#0 The &ast must it itsel into the way it is seen by the %est so that Bushbabies can i!ht ri!hteous wars that also serve to rob the ormer o its riches# 8et sympathetic interventions, like the one made by -arhana in the lie o $aryams child, also turn out to be ruinous# -aced with inscrutable reality, ,adir hides behind his camera when he is not lookin! out into the ordered, mana!eable world o the %est rom the bay window o -arhanas apartment# But sinister windows 1like the mountains, $alika +arbat and ,an!a +arbat, in the araway Ka!han 9alley 1 which open on the !rey void, beckon him# ,adir must put away his camera in the Ka!han 9alley to stare naked at /loneliness, the absolute absence o anywhere or anyone to turn to0# The intensely poetic, even mythic, :uality o Khans prose produces mi"ed results# It !ives the story a resonance beyond itsel but the story is oten lost in the resonance# +erhaps this eect is deliberate4 Khan may have been tryin! to make the novels structure ollow the elusive Silk 3oute 1 still thrivin! at places, lost to the rava!es o time at others# &ven as the heap o broken ima!es in Thinner than Skin live on, the story be!ins to ade rom the readers consciousness as soon as the book is shut# A,USUA $UK7&3;&&