The Wasted Vigil

The Wasted Vigil by nadeem aslam The author of Maps for
Lost Lovers gives us 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 progressive outspoken
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
during the Soviet invasion; David an American a former spy
who has seen his ideals turned inside out during his
twenty-five years in Afghanistan; 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 Nadeem Aslam reveals the complex ties—of
love and desperation pain and salvation madness and
clarity—that bind the characters. And through their
stories he creates a timely and achingly intimate portrait
of the “continuation of wars” that shapes our world. In
its radiant language its depth of feeling and its
unflinching drama The Wasted Vigil is a luminous work of
fiction.