Best of Friends
Sometimes it was as though the forty years of friendship between them was just a lesson in the unknowability of other people… In 1988, as Pakistan is on the brink of political overhaul, two fourteen-year-old girls are on the brink of womanhood. Their Arcadian days of secrets, laughter and a shared love for George Michael are brought crashing down when a snap decision at a party changes their lives forever.
Years later in London, Zahra and Maryam are women with money, power and influence. They are both, however, still haunted by that night all those years ago.
Insightful and unsettling, Best of Friends employs sumptuous prose to unpick the seams of a forty-year friendship and illuminate the ripple-like effects of power and history.
Source: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/best-of-friends-9781526680044/
Keywords/Themes
Friendship, coming of age, family, love, trauma, homosexuality, dictatorship, social media, politics, human rights, immigration, race.
Book Review & Recommended Use in Classroom
A testament to the power of friendship that carries on over decades and across continents, unaltered even by the seemingly insurmountable differences between the two main characters. I enjoyed this novel’s pace and the contrast between the world as seen through the perspectives of two teenage girls at first, and later, through the eyes of the women they become. As teenagers, Maryam and Zahra’s lives revolve around their ambitions, the inner conflicts between who they want to be and the way they’re perceived, their families, their friendship and first relationships. As adults, their bond is unaltered. Their personalities have evolved, their goals have changed, but the two teenagers from Karachi are still at the core of the women in their mid-forties who now live in London. I appreciated this portrayal of friendship, with its changing dynamics and constant negotiation.
I can imagine this novel being suitable for class 11 or 12. The first half – in which Maryam and Zahra are teenagers – could also be read in class 10. In this section topics like friendship, sexuality, and the relationships with parents offer a good starting point for discussion. The girls’ upbringing during the military dictatorship in Pakistan is an interesting topic to broach in class. I would compare the characters’ experiences in Pakistan – such as getting illegal films under the counter, the news breaking about political change – to life as teenagers in the GDR (e.g. gathering information through a questionnaire for students’ parents).
I would read the second part of the book, focusing on Maryam and Zahra’s lives as adults, with a class that is old enough to understand and discuss the complexities of politics, sexuality, women’s agency and gender, as well as the different facets of interpersonal relationships.
(Alexandra, October 2025)
Sensitive Content
Deals with life under the Pakistani dictatorship of the 1980s, its political violence, authoritarianism, and gender-based power dynamics. It includes scenes of sexual harassment. The second part of the book contains explicit sex scenes. Topics like racism and immigration are discussed.
About the Author
Kamila Shamsie grew up in Karachi, Pakistan in a family of writers including her mother and great-aunt, which fostered her love of storytelling early on. She trained in creative writing in the United States — earning a BA from Hamilton College and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst — and moved to London in 2007, now holding dual Pakistani-British citizenship. Her upbringing between Karachi and London, and her exposure to multiple cultures and languages, deeply inform her novels, which often explore themes of identity, displacement, and belonging.
