Debut novelist Zia Haider Rahman is quite the polymath and it shows. Touching on a dizzying range of topics from salamanders to Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem, Rahman sometimes seems too caught up in emphasizing his own brilliance at the expense of story. He is at his best when shining light on the nuances of race, class and the dangerousness of the best intentions gone awry in Afghanistan. As that limited field of vision on the cover effectively demonstrates, frame of reference matters especially since winning hearts and minds is never an easy task. An impressive debut from a writer worth watching.
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