Home Fire: WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018

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LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 'Elegant and evocative ... A powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world' Guardian 'There is high, high music in the air at the end of Home Fire' New York Times Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mothers death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she cant stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London or their brother, Parvaiz, whos 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 Parvaizs 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

Home Fire left me awestruck, shaken, on the edge of my chair, filled with admiration for her courage and ambition. Recommended reading for prime ministers and presidents everywhere -- Peter Carey
Elegant and evocative ... A powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world, tipping its hat to the same dilemma in the ancient one * Guardian *
Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes Ive read in a novel this century ... There is high, high music in the air at the end of Home Fire * New York Times *
Two families fates are devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love * Irish Times *
Home Fire blazes with the kind of annihilating devastation that transcends grief * Washington Post *
Retells Antigone against the backdrop of contemporary London, weaving a poignant and timely tale of two British Muslim families with differing ideas about loyalty to the state * Observer, Fiction to Look out for in 2017 *
Conflicts of loyalty in two British Muslim families unfold against a backdrop of religious fundamentalism this is geopolitics made arrestingly personal * Daily Telegraph *
Shamsies simple, lucid prose plays in perfect harmony with the heartbeat of modern times. Home Fire deftly reveals all the ways in which the political is as personal as the personal is political. No novel could be as timely -- Aminatta Forna
A good novelist blurs the imaginary line between us and them; Kamila Shamsie is the rare writer who makes one forget there was ever such a thing as a line. Home Fire is a remarkable novel, both timely and necessary -- Rabih Alameddine
A searing novel about the choices people make for love, and for the place they call home -- Laila Lalami
Home Fire is longlisted for the Man Booker prize. Its a worthy contender and one pays it the highest compliment one can pay fiction: it makes you think. Uncomfortably * John Sutherland, The Times (Saturday Review) *

Author Bio

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, most recently, 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. 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 grew up in Karachi and now lives in London. @kamilashamsie