[Shamsie] packs her story with the playful evidence of her high-flying intelligence. -- San Francisco ChronicleRaised together from birth, Raheen and her best friend Karim dream each other's dreams and finish each other's sentences. They share an idyllic childhood in upper-class Karachi with parents who are also best friends, even once engaged to the other until they rematched in what they jokingly call "the fiancee swap." But when Karim's family migrates from Pakistan to London, distance and adolescence split the friends apart. Karim takes refuge in the rationality of maps while Raheen searches for the secret behind her parents' exchange. She uncovers a story not just of a family's turbulent history but that of a country -- and finds herself poised between strained friendship and fated love with Karim."This 30-year-old has been described as a young Anita Desai, and her third book, about childhood, love, life and high society in Karachi during the turbulent 1990s is worth all the prepublication fuss." - Harper's BazaarKamila Shamsie, author of two previous novels, has been twice shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday Prize and named by the Orange Prize Futures as one of "21 writers for the 21st century.” She lives in London and Karachi, and serves as Visiting Professor of English at Hamilton College.