Book Review: Nadeem Aslam's The Wasted Vigil

Raza Naeem of Frontline reviews Nadeem Aslam's 2008 novel The Wasted Vigil, about life in Afghanistan at the end of the twentieth century:

There have been notable attempts in the past, by novelists of Afghan origin, to chronicle the pain of their country, such as Atiq Rahimi’s beautiful, albeit short, novels Earth and Ashes and A Thousand Rooms of Dreams and Fear and pop-schlock attempts by Khaled Hosseini, the Hollywood darling, in The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. The noted Pakistani activist Feryal Gauhar made the American occupation of Afghanistan the theme of her recent novel, No Room for Further Burials.

Aslam’s novel overtakes all these in its sheer stylistic beauty, broad scope and historical approach. There is a seeming attempt to incorporate as many of the protagonists in the Afghan history of the last two decades as possible, with their respective responsibilities culminating in the wasteland that is Afghanistan today.