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Kartography is a book about Karachi, the spider plant city where you might find, according to the narrator, fossilized footprints of Alexander the Great. It is a heartbreaking love story, depicts the ethnic conflict which pervades Pakistani society and yet at the same time the resilience of its people. The story revolves around four friends and their lives in Karachi during 1971, which they call the 'Civil War'. The couples Zafar and Maheen, Yasmin and Ali swap their partners. While they handle the situation somehow, it is their children who can't accept the fact that one of their parents had betrayed the other. Karim and Raheen were friends from the time they were born. Karim's parents get separated and somehow he can never get over the situation. His main aim in life is to become a cartographer and give names to the places in Karachi 'where the streets have no name'. Both Karim and Raheen are fascinated by the city of their birth and they keep coming back to i...

A voracious reader and passionate writer, Mahmud Rahman's short stories have been published in magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and recently his first collection of short stories Killing The Water – long-listed for Frank O’Connor Prize - was published by Penguin. Of the 12 stories five are set in the backdrop of Bangladesh and the Liberation War. Growing up in Bangladesh and later living in the US for many years Mahmud's writing covers a varied landscape. On his recent visit to Dhaka he talks to Jackie Kabir about his writing and the reasons behind the subjects he chooses to write on. What inspires you to write? Did the urge to write begin early in life? Sitting down at a keyboard feels like something I have done forever. When I was about twelve, my sister gave me a Royal typewriter with a broken carriage return. With a string and a stone, I made it work and put out a wall newspaper at my school, St Joseph's, then in Narinda. For a lon...