Best Of Friends

Kamila Shamsie Bloomsbury Circus, £16.99

Gore Vidal once said: “Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies”. Kamila Shamsie, who won the 2018 Women’s Prize for Home Fire, is less cynical than Vidal but, here, she cleverly captures the competitive nature of even the closest friendships.

It is 1988 when we first meet Maryam and Zahra, 14-year-old pupils at an exclusive Karachi school.

Zahra’s family is prosperous, Maryam’s family is wealthy. But Zahra desperately needs a scholarship if she is to achieve her dream of studying at Cambridge while Maryam, equally talented, is a less dedicated student, secure in the knowledge that her grandfather intends her to head up the family business her playboy father is too lazy to bother with.

The assassination of the dictator General Zia and the democratic election of Benazir Bhutto fill both girls with hope and a sense of infinite possibilities.

Then, one fateful evening, they get into a car with a couple of young hoods, a decision with lasting consequences for the girls’ friendship.

The second half of the novel is set in 2019 London where Zahra and Maryam have settled, both equally successfully – Zahra as the well-connected head of the Council For Civil Liberties, and Maryam as a venture capitalist.

Zahra is divorced but has a surrogate family in Maryam, her partner and their 10-year-old daughter.

Again, the political background is important, with both women, despite their achievements, aware that their acceptance by the metropolitan elite is often tokenism.

In fact, the two women have considerable influence, but widely different views on how to exercise it. They are brought face to face with this divergence when one of the hoods reappears in their lives.

This is a beautifully crafted novel with excellent characterisation, skilfully interweaving the personal and the political throughout.