A stunning, captivating novel spanning generations and the globe. From the bombing of Nagasaki through to the attacks of 9/11 we follow Hiroko Tanaka’s life, the people she meets, the places she goes the challenges she takes on. A lovely, lyrical, tender novel.
'A formidable arching tale about loss and foreignness' - Financial Times
'Powerful, epic yet skilfully controlled … Shamsie's voice is clear and compelling, with a welcome sparseness' - Guardian
'Completely authentic, complex, and breath-stopping' - Emma Thompson _______________
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
Here was one who would squeeze the sun in her fist if she ever got the chance; yes, and tilt her head back to swallow its liquid light.
August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Twenty-one year old Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, wearing an embroidered kimono ahead of her marriage to Konrad Weiss. In a second of destruction and senseless violence, everything Hiroko has known and loved is decimated. The scars, both literal and metaphorical, will stay with her forever.
Attempting to escape this devastation, Hiroko travels to Delhi, encountering the bloodshed of an India undergoing Partition. As the years unravel, surnames change, new places become home and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts.
A novel of tremendous scope, across land and time, Burnt Shadows perceptively demonstrates the far and unyielding reach of the tentacles of war and displacement, and the irrevocable wounds of the past. _______________
'Shamsie achieves the near impossibility of a truly intimate epic tale … I challenge anyone to put this book down lightly' - Shami Chakrabarti, Observer, Books of the Year
'A giant of novel … Beautifully realised' - Independent
'Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world’s many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. Burnt Shadows is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response.' - Salman Rushdie
‘Marvellous... It's a huge leap forward for her, I think; its breadth and depth are wonderful. It's beautifully paced, and delicately written; the past evoked with such lyricism and pain, the unbearable present so unbearably unbearable and yet it has such tenderness.’- Barbara Trapido
‘Burnt Shadows is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that I’ve (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have travelled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come.’ - Tahmima Anam, author of The Golden Age
‘Burnt Shadows is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author’s intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions.’ - Anita Desai
Author
About Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Pakistan. She is the author of four previous novels: In the City by the Sea, Kartography (both shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys / Mail on Sunday Prize), Salt and Saffron and Broken Verses. In 1999 she received the Prime Minister's Award for Literature and in 2004 the Patras Bokhari Award - both award by the Pakistan Academy of Letters. Kamila Shamsie lives in London and Karachi.
Kamila Shamsie is available for interview and is also an experienced journalist, broadcaster, speaker and chairperson at public events.
