Nadeem Aslam was longlisted for the Booker for his last book, Maps for Lost Lovers. This latest novel is set in post-9/11 Afghanistan, where six very different characters gather in a half-ruined house, an old perfume factory owned by an English widower, a doctor. His visitors include a young Afghan teacher, an American ex-CIA operative who supported the mujahideen in the 1980s, and a Russian woman looking for her lost brother, who disappeared in the area during the same period. The six are bound by an intricate web of connections, and the shared experience of the terrible afflictions that have plagued Afghanistan. This is a haunting, exquisitely written evocation of the horrors of war – and the endurance of love.