Home Fire

WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZEA BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDAND AND NEW YORK TIMES‘The book for our times’ - Judges of the Women’s Prize'Elegant and evocative ... A powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world' - Guardian' Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I’ve read in a novel this century' - New York Times. Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London – or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream: to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs. As the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love? A contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times. NOW A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIMESHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDSHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2017SHORTLISTED FOR THE DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE 2018LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

Occasionally you know that one of the writers alive at the same time as you has written the book they were born to write … Home Fire has lit a light that’ll never go out; Shamsie’s version of Antigone reveals the ancient tragedy we’re living now, A modern retelling of Antigone set among a family divided by politics, love, and radicalism. In fewer than 300 pages, it managed to do all the things I want novels to do – tell me something about the world, give me a tiny glimpse into the otherness of others, and, most of all, give me that ache of longing as I turned the last page and realised I would never meet these characters again, Why do some people become radicalised? It’s a question I’ve explored with experts on-air, but perhaps fiction can provide greater insight. Kamila Shamsie’s powerful novel Home Fire, inspired by Sophocles’s Antigone, did just that, I very much enjoyed and admired Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, a politically and psychologically acute novel modelled on Sophocles’s Antigone – but reworked as the story of two British Muslim sisters and their jihadist brother, I enjoyed Kamila Shamsie’s Man Booker-longlisted Home Fire, which does a great job of bringing Sophocles’s Antigone into the world of Skype and Isis. Shamsie’s writing resonates on the human, political and lyrical plane but its topicality, tight plot and vivid characterisation also suggest a film script in the making

Kamila Shamsie is the author of six novels: In the City by the Sea (shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Salt and Saffron; Kartography (also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize); Broken Verses; Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) and A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, the Books Are My Bag Readers Awards 2018, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and the International Dublin Literary Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction 2018. Three of her novels have received awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013; she was also awarded a South Bank Arts Award in 2018. She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London.@kamilashamsie

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