Home Fire: A Novel

Description

NOW A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME

WINNER OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018

WINNER OF THE LONDON HELLENIC PRIZE

SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2017

SHORTLISTED FOR THE DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN LITERATURE 2018

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

‘A BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2017’ – GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDARD, 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

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.

Reviews

“Ingenious and love-struck … Home Fire takes flight. … Shamsie drives this gleaming machine home in a manner that, if I weren’t handling airplane metaphors, I would call smashing. … Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I’ve read in a novel this century.” —New York Times

“[U]rgent and explosive … near perfect … a difficult book to put down.”—NPR

“[A] haunting novel, full of dazzling moments and not a few surprising turns…HomeFire blazes with the kind of annihilating devastation that transcends grief.” —Washington Post

“Achingly good…[and] shrewdly subversive.”—The New York Times Book Review

“This wrenching, thought-provoking novel races to a shattering climax.”—People Magazine

“A Greek tragedy for the age of ISIS …  spare as a fable yet intensely intimate.”—Vogue

“A thought-provoking commentary on loyalty, love, justice, politics, terrorism, religion, and family.” —Buzzfeed

“Elegant and intense, Kamila Shamsie’s seventh novel asks timeless questions about love for and loyalty to family and ideology — and you won’t be able to put it down until you reach its unforgettable ending… it’s safe to say this is Shamsie at her best.”—Shondaland.com

“Pitch perfect…We can expect more great work from this audaciously talented author.” —New York Journal of Books

“Her last, perfect word serves as a contemporary, against-all-odds, global prayer… Shamsie’s latest is a compelling, stupendous stand-out to be witnessed, honored, and deeply commended.”—Christian Science Monitor

“A cross-continental novel about civil disobedience that tackles political and emotional matters with equal assurance.” —Time Magazine

“Shamsie’s timely fiction probes the roots of radicalism and the pull of the family.” —O, the Oprah Magazine

“A blaze of identity, family, nationalism, and Sophocles’ Antigone.”—Vanity Fair

“Stunning…every fall reader who picks this up will be mesmerized by Shamsie’s enchanting prose—and they’ll definitely fall in love with these unforgettable characters.”—Redbook Magazine

“So good that it will break your heart.”—WAMC, “The Roundtable”

“An absorbing and incisive study of race and roots, attachment and affiliation — to a cause, a country, a person, a family — which encompasses five fascinatingly divergent viewpoints… timely and incendiary.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“All of Shamsie’s novels are deeply moving and morally complex, leading to the kind of rich reading experience most of us hope for in every novel we pick up. Her newest has all of that and more.” —San Francisco Chronicle

“Astonishingly accomplished, melding classic story with text messages and contemporary headlines, and Shamsie makes every devastatingly unknown compassionately known.”  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Shamsie’s newest bestseller unpacks the controversial subjects of love, humanity, and extremism with due care.”—Brit + Co

“Remarkable… [an] engrossing work of literature, one not only important to current political conversation, but also that holds timeless truths and a story that never grows old.”—Chicago Review of Books

“Shamsie’s prose is, as always, elegant and evocative. Home Fire pulls off a fine balancing act: it is a powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world, while tipping its hat to the same dilemma in the ancient one.”—The Guardian

Author Biography

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, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, 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