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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
The first half of Shamsie’s novel read like an
Autobiography of every teenager in Pakistan in the late 1980s and 1990s. Very evocative of a time in Pakistan where classism and social
Mores dictated friendships and relationships. The second half touched on a lot of modern themes, such as immigration issues, facial recognition and privacy concerns, power and profit over morality. While the author covered a wide spectrum of issues, particularly covering recent policy developments on immigrants, the second half of the novel read more like a leftist manifesto, trying to evoke outrage in recent policies towards immigrants as Kamila herself has been . I felt the ending was very abrupt and didn’t answer the question of why are lives become divergent or how childhood relationships and interactions change
or dont change us. Maybe friendship, like
any relationship, is just a tool to realise who we really are.

A story about friendship and ethics

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I enjoyed it but perhaps not as much as other books of hers. I liked the storyline and characters but I wasn't gripped so giving it 4 not 5.

Good

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I couldn't get Interested in the long karachi story. the London bits were better. overall home fire was a far better book. disappointed as liked her previous works

not great much too girly. Home fire was superior

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I am very impressed. It is so nice to see a book dealing with British Pakistanis that doesn't revert to clichés and anti Pakistani values.
At its heart, this book is about redemption and acceptance of the past. In its execution, to bring out this, we are taken into the world of middle class London and then, the rich affluent middle class of Karachi and the characters are vividly painted as having demons of their own.
The central characters of the two sisters are easy to sympathise with and the male characters, although chauvinists, have a strong viewpoint that deserves being listened to.
Overall, after the first half hour,this book became addictive and I was listening to it continuously for 4 to 5 hours and I finished it within 2 days.
I loved it.
R Sohail Akhtar

A wonderful book. Loved every moment.

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I enjoyed this - so well observed and vivid depiction of two contrasting countries so well done

Great read

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