Best of Friends

Description

“A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces.” —Madeline Miller

From the acclaimed author of Home Fire, the moving and surprising story of a lifelong friendship and the forces that bring it to the breaking point

Zahra and Maryam have been best friends since childhood in Karachi, even though—or maybe because—they are unlike in nearly every way. Yet they never speak of the differences in their backgrounds or their values, not even after the fateful night when a moment of adolescent impulse upends their plans for the future.
 
Three decades later, Zahra and Maryam have grown into powerful women who have each cut a distinctive path through London. But when two troubling figures from their past resurface, they must finally confront their bedrock differences—and find out whether their friendship can survive.
 
Thought-provoking, compassionate, and full of unexpected turns, Best of Friends offers a riveting take on an age-old question: Does principle or loyalty make for the better friend?
 
 
 Advance praise for Best of Friends:

“Unputdownable.” —Real Simple

“Sophisticated and poignant. . . . [brings] exquisite nuance [to its] depiction of long-lasting friendship.” —Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Home Fire:

“Ingenious and love-struck … builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I’ve read in a novel this century.” –The New York Times

“Urgent and explosive. . . near perfect. . . a difficult book to put down.” —NPR

“A haunting novel, full of dazzling moments and not a few surprising turns…Home Fire blazes with the kind of annihilating devastation that transcends grief.” —Washington Post

“Achingly good. . . [and] shrewdly subversive.” —The New York Times Book ReviewKamila Shamsie is the author of several previous novels, most recently Home Fire, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Costa Novel Award, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, among other honors. She was raised in Karachi and lives in London.
 

1. Zahra and Maryam differ greatly in every respect⁠—personality, appearance, family background, politics—yet from childhood they have a seemingly unshakable bond. Do you think they are such good friends in spite of their differences or because of them? How have you observed difference and similarity playing out in friendships in your own life?

2. At the outset of the novel, Maryam comes back to Karachi after a summer in London, her body developed into a woman’s. Zahra’s and Maryam’s sexuality—their own desires and those projected upon them—threads through the story. How does each experience it—as liberation, as constraint? How does it pull them together? How does it divide them?

3. At the end of Part I, an incident after a friend’s party has not only devastating practical consequences for both girls but a long-term emotional impact on each of them as well. How does this incident prove pivotal for each character in both the short and long term?

4. Politics—specifically, the transition from military dictatorship to the election of Benazir Bhutto in late 1980s Pakistan and the contemporary UK government’s descent into corruption and xenophobia—is an ongoing backdrop to the friends’ relationship. How does it shape their outlooks and their fates?

5. Along with the friendship itself, Shamsie’s depiction of the girls’ family relationships shifts as the novel progresses. What surprised you about the way those dynamics evolved over time? What does Shamsie seem to be saying about the limitations and possibilities of the parent-child bond?

6. Both women excel in their chosen fields, but their career choices, and the means by which they advance, are as different as they are. What questions does Shamsie seem to be raising about ambition, means, and ends?

7. Each woman is confronted by a morally fraught professional situation over the course of the novel—Maryam by an online harassment situation created by a social media app her venture capital fund has helped launch, Zahra by the detainment of an immigrant her organization has been assisting with a citizenship application. How does each woman deal with the challenge, and how do their responses play out for them, professionally and personally? How did you feel about the choices they made?

8. When the perpetrators of the long-ago incident resurface in the women’s lives, it sets their friendship on a collision course they have spent decades avoiding. How does each woman respond? What bedrock differences do their responses lay bare?

9. The very ending of the novel leaves much to the reader’s imagination. What do you think has become of the friendship at this point? Would you have written the ending differently?

10. Does principle or loyalty make for the better friend?

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