 First edition | |
| Author | Kamila Shamsie |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Published | 2009 (Bloomsbury Publishing) |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
Burnt Shadows is a 2009 novel by Kamila Shamsie. It was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction [1] and won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Fiction. [2]
In four sections, Burnt Shadows follows the intersecting histories of two families, beginning in the final days of World War II in Japan, following to India on the brink of partition in 1947, to Pakistan in the early 1980s, and then to New York in the aftermath of 9/11 and Afghanistan in the wake of the ensuing US bombing campaign.
In the prologue, an unidentified prisoner finds himself naked in a cell in Guantanamo, wondering: "How did it come to this?" The main story then begins in Nagasaki in 1945, with Hiroko Tanaka, a 21-year-old teacher-turned-munitions worker who is in love with the German Konrad Weiss. Their idyllic romance ends in tragedy, with a fatal flash that leaves Konrad a "burnt shadow" on the ground, and indelibly sears the birds on Hiroko's kimono into the skin of her back. In search of new beginnings, Hiroko travels to Delhi. She stays with Konrad's half-sister, Ilse, now known as Elizabeth, and her husband, James Burton. She begins to learn Urdu with Burton's clerk, Sajjad Ashraf, with whom a relationship blossoms, to the Burtons' disapproval.
With the partition of India, Hiroko's world turns upside down once again, and she finds a new life in newly created Pakistan. In Karachi, Hiroko and Sajjad's son Raza is born. He meets a CIA operative, who is none other than Harry Burton, Ilse and James' son. Ilse has meanwhile reclaimed her Identity, divorced James, and moved to New York. Raza finds himself, naively, swept up into the jihadist movement in Afghanistan. When she loses Sajjad as well, Hiroko moves to New York to be near Ilse. Though the women have not seen each other in decades, they find themselves deeply bound to each other.
Harry has meanwhile extracted Raza from his unsought extremist associations, and instead, offers him a career in the private security/intelligence sector. The parallel convergence of the families in New York and Afghanistan is the foundation from which both tragedy and support arise. Above ground zero, as she once stood over her destroyed home city, Hiroko becomes attached to Harry's daughter Kim, and meets an Afghan taxi driver who becomes a key player in the dramatic events that follow. [3] [4]
Burnt Shadows was generally well received by critics.
Maya Jaggi, in her review in The Guardian , praises the book as hugely ambitious, Shamsie's voice as "clear and compelling", and admires the use of both Eastern and Western literary references and poetry in Shamsie's style and narratives. [5] She writes: "The identity of the Guantánamo captive remains unclear till the powerful denouement, as events unfold with a malign logic whereby even a man's stooping for a cricket ball can be fatally misconstrued. Any reader anticipating a predictable yarn about the radicalisation of Islamist youth may feel cheated. Far more, I suspect, will feel challenged and enlightened, possibly provoked, and undoubtedly enriched." [5] Writing for the Independent, Charlie Lee Potter says: "The grasp of language, the subtlety of expression and the sheer mastery of international politics are all impressive. And so, too, are the details: family loyalties, national allegiances, betrayals, the sometimes misguided desire we have to protect our children from the truth." Like other reviews, Potter takes on the question of whether the broad strokes of history employed by Shamsie are effective, and he answers with "a resounding, thumping, capitalised YES". [6]
HuffPost reviewer Adrienne Celt finds one weakness in Burnt Shadows: "Shamsie does a beautiful job of building worlds, only to take them away again in a sudden and breathless fashion." [7] She disagrees with Potter, finding that, "At home in implication and poetics, Shamsie is able to make us draw breath at the slightest touch, and as such it's somewhat disappointing that she insists on using so many broad narrative strokes." [7] However, she also opines that "Burnt Shadows does a compelling job of implicating the world in our minute heartbreaks; of teasing out the potential for politics, however distant they may feel, to break into our seemingly self-contained existences and make hash of our plans." [7]
According to the Kirkus review of Burnt Shadows: "Wit, formidable imagination and intricate, well-worked characterizations distinguish the twisty narrative... With a rare combination of skill and sensitivity, Shamsie generates pathos for outsiders and the displaced." [8] The San Francisco Book Review's Susan Gardner writes, "Throughout the sweep of political tides, as relationships and connections are made, get broken, are renewed or severed, the cast of characters expands and are superbly woven in to the fabric of this beautifully written novel. [9] Shamsie is a lyrical writer, with a keen eye for detail and a poignant way of phrasing every-day observations that feel new when she voices them." [9]
| Year | Award | Category | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Orange Prize | — | Finalist | [10] |
| 2010 | Anisfield-Wolf Book Award | Fiction | Won | [11] |
| The Morning News Tournament of Books | — | Quarterfinalist | [12] | |
| 2011 | International Dublin Literary Award | — | Longlisted | [13] |
Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth (2000), immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. She became a tenured professor in the Creative Writing faculty of New York University in September 2010.
The Khadr family is an Egyptian-Canadian family noted for their ties to Osama bin Laden and connections to al-Qaeda.
Kamila Shamsie FRSL is a Pakistani and British writer and novelist who is best known for her award-winning novel Home Fire (2017). Named on Granta magazine's list of 20 best young British writers, Shamsie has been described by The New Indian Express as "a novelist to reckon with and to look forward to." She also writes for publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on Censorship and Prospect, and broadcasts on radio.
Geraldine Brooks is an Australian American journalist and novelist whose 2005 novel March won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
James McBride is an American writer and musician. He is the recipient of the 2013 National Book Award for fiction for his novel The Good Lord Bird.
The publishing industry in Pakistan is hampered both by a low literacy rate (65%).
Tobias Fleet Hill was a British poet, essayist, writer of short stories and novelist.
In the Country of Men is the debut novel of the writer Hisham Matar, first published in July 2006 by Viking, an imprint of Penguin Books. It was nominated for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. It has so far been translated into 22 languages and was awarded the 2007 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize as well as a host of international literary prizes. The book was also nominated for the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award in the U.S and won the Arab American Book Award in 2007.
Karachi Literature Festival (KLF) is an annual international literary festival held in Karachi, Pakistan. It is the first festival of its kind in Pakistan. It is one of the world's youngest and fastest growing literary festivals. Till 2019, ten festivals have been held.
Pakistani English literature refers to English literature that has been developed and evolved in Pakistan, as well as by members of the Pakistani diaspora who write in the English language. English is one of the official languages of Pakistan and has a history going back to the British colonial rule in South Asia ; the national dialect spoken in the country is known as Pakistani English. Today, it occupies an important and integral part in modern Pakistani literature. Dr. Alamgir Hashmi introduced the term "Pakistani Literature [originally written] in English" with his "Preface" to his pioneering book Pakistani Literature: The Contemporary English Writers as well as through his other scholarly work and the seminars and courses taught by him in many universities since 1970's. It was established as an academic discipline in the world following his lead and further work by other scholars, and it is now a widely popular field of study.
Dolores Kendrick was an American poet, and served as the second Poet Laureate of the District of Columbia. Her book The Women of Plums: Poems in the Voices of Slave Women won the Anisfield-Wolf Award.
Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir is a memoir on the Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan, written by Kashmiri American journalist Basharat Peer. It primarily focuses on the impact of the ongoing anti-India insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, and is a winner of the Crossword Prize for Nonfiction. It was also included in the 2010 issues of both the 'Books of the Year' list by The Economist and 'A Year's Reading' by The New Yorker.
Lubna of Córdoba was an Andalusian intellectual, mathematician, and poet of the second half of the 10th century known for the quality of her writing and her excellence in the sciences. Lubna was born into slavery and raised within the Madīnat al-Zahrā palace. She then pursued a career within the palace as part of Al-Hakam II's team of copyists.
Mirza Waheed is a British novelist and writer. Born and raised in Srinagar, Mirza is known for writing that mainly revolves around the Kashmir conflict and insurgency. Mirza is based in London.
Namwali Serpell is an American and Zambian writer who teaches in the United States. In April 2014, she was named on Hay Festival's Africa39 list of 39 sub-Saharan African writers aged under 40 with the potential and talent to define trends in African literature. Her short story "The Sack" won the 2015 Caine Prize for African fiction in English. In 2020, Serpell won the Belles-lettres category Grand Prix of Literary Associations 2019 for her debut novel The Old Drift.
The Year of the Runaways is the second novel by British author Sunjeev Sahota. Published in June 2015, it was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize and was awarded with a European Union Prize for Literature in 2017.
Reconciliation: Islam, Democracy, and the West (2008) is the last book by former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. The book was published after her assassination.
Home Fire (2017) is the seventh novel by Kamila Shamsie. It reimagines Sophocles's play Antigone unfolding among British Muslims. The novel follows the Pasha family: twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz and their older sister Isma, who has raised them in the years since the death of their mother; their jihadi father, whom the twins never knew, is also dead. Parvaiz attempts to follow in his father's footsteps by joining ISIS in Syria. He soon decides he has made a serious mistake and his twin sister attempts to help him return to Britain, in part through her romantic relationship with Eamonn Lone, son of British Home Secretary Karamat Lone, who has built his political career on his rejection of his own Muslim background. The effort to bring Parvaiz home fails when he is shot to death trying to escape ISIS, then Eamonn and Aneeka, trying to return Parvaiz's body to the UK over the objections of Karamat Lone, die in a terrorist attack.
Selection Day is a 2016 sports fiction novel written by Booker Prize winner Aravind Adiga. It was shortlisted along with four other writers for the 2017 DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. It tells the story of Mohan Kumar, a chutney seller who trains his two sons: Manju Kumar and Radha Krishna for Mumbai's under-19 cricket team. Here Manju meets his rival, Javed. It was adapted into a Netflix series of the same name.
The Old Drift is a 2019 historical fiction and science fiction novel by Zambian author Namwali Serpell. Set in Rhodesia/Zambia, it is Serpell's debut novel and follows the lives of three interwoven families in three generations. It won the 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award as well as the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)| Authority control databases: National |
|---|
