Burnt Shadows

Kamila Shamsie Press Reviews

'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