Nadeem Aslam’s new novel The Wasted Vigil ambitiously attempts to contextualize three decades of conflict in Afghanistan through the lives of its three main characters: Marcus, an English doctor living near Tora Bora, whose Afghani wife was killed by the Taliban, Lara, a Russian woman searching for her missing brother who disappeared during the Soviet invasion, and David, the ex-CIA operative tortured by his past. There’s also the young Islamic fundamentalist Casa, who dreams of jihad–possibly the novel’s most interesting character. Aslam weaves these stories together in a meditation on art and war, beauty and violence, and family and politics, never shying away from the brutality of a good stoning or elective amputation.
The Wasted Vigil works best when Aslam restrains his language and communicates in a more journalistic style. These moments are few and far between, however; most of the time, Aslam is overly concerned with explicitly announcing every allusion and broadly indicating the critical or aesthetic importance of even the slightest of his characters’ actions. Aslam’s prose is far more satisfying when he backs away from overblown, overwritten sentences and simply lets his readers figure out what’s going on for themselves. That said, Aslam can certainly turn an artful phrase–it’s just that artful phrase piled upon artful phrase becomes showy, even tacky. Restraint allows prose to build rhythmically and payoff meaningfully, but there isn’t enough restraint here.
Of course, Aslam’s subject matter is hardly restrained. Afghanistan is a place of remarkable violence and brutality, but also a place rich with history and culture. Perhaps Aslam’s editors believed his audience deserved an overtly complex representation of Afghanistan, and perhaps they are right in this belief. After all, the country has been very much in the background of the West’s political conscience for the past decade (translating in to big success for other books about Afghanistan, notably Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner). Undoubtedly, there are a great many who will enjoy The Wasted Vigil. Those fascinated with Afghanistan and its sad, strange, violent history will have more than enough to mull over in this elaborate, intelligent, thoughtful novel.
The Wasted Vigil is now available in hardback from Knopf.
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