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Best of Friends

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Best of Friends

By: Kamila Shamsie
Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
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About this listen

 Bloomsbury presents Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie, read by Tania Rodrigues.

‘A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces’ MADELINE MILLER

** SHORTLISTED FOR THE INDIE BOOK AWARDS 2023 ** PICKED AS ONE OF THE SUNDAY TIMES' BEST PAPERBACKS OF 2023** CHOSEN AS A BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR BY THE GUARDIAN, BBC, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL, IRISH TIMES AND FINANCIAL TIMES **

Maryam and Zahra.

In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan’s dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome.

Zahra and Maryam.

In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways. Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it… Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision?

'An epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' Observer©2022 Kamila Shamsie (P)2022 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc Fiction Friendship Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Funny

Critic Reviews

A shining tour de force about a long friendship’s respects, disrespects, loyalties and moralities. Shamsie never compromises. This novel is of a rare quality, and even more evidence of her ability to write fiction that’s simultaneously vividly alive to its time and so good and true that it’s as if it has always been with us. (ALI SMITH)
It is a rare writer who can examine with such insight and tenderness the forces that bind us to certain moments in life, and do it in language that is both precise and exquisite, expansive and attuned to the tiniest emotional detail. Kamila Shamsie has done it again in this magnificent, profoundly moving novel. Best of Friends is compulsive reading, and a reminder that in the end, the strongest force is always love (MAAZA MENGISTE)
The human heart can harbour deeply hidden contradictions. Here Kamila Shamsie brilliantly unearths the darker emotions that can live beneath the surface of a friendship - virtue laced with venality and love poisoned with the sugared toxins of envy and even hate. A disturbing and carefully crafted novel of rich psychological insight (BARONESS HELENA KENNEDY QC)
A haunting novel which asks big questions about justice, class, and the borders of our moral selves, all wrapped around the deliciously absorbing story of a childhood friendship that endures - fun, complicated, the kind of friendship that feels elemental (MEGHA MAJUMDAR, author of A BURNING)
All stars
Most relevant  
I loved the first part of the book, where the friends are at school in Karachi. In the second part, when they are both high-powered women in London, I found their friendship implausible, their differences too great. It didn’t really work for me.

Not convinced

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I loved this book, telling the story of female friendship against a backdrop of world events. Somehow timeless and modern at the same time.

Brilliant book, well told

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Disappointing. I didn’t like the writing and I found it difficult to follow sometimes whether it Maryam or Zara.
The ending redeemed itself slightly

Average

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Very lightweight narration of a story that over promises. Waste of $$, and of the two hours I spent before I realised it was not going anywhere.

So disappointing

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