Kamila Shamsie

Home Fire: by Kamila Shamsie | Conversation StartersAfter years of taking care of her twin siblings, Isma finally flies to Massachusetts from London to pursue her graduate degree. But she worries about twins Aneeka and Parvaiz, and the effects of having a jihadi father they barely knew. Parvaiz joins ISIS hoping to know more about his father. Aneeka denounces Isma for telling the police where their brother is. Aneeka then has an affair with the son of Britains home secretary hoping that this will help bring back her brother. But political and religious beliefs are irreconcilable between their families. Will Parvaiz be freed from the jihadis and reconcile with his sisters? This modern-day Antigone, longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize, portrays the conflicts that tear apart lovers, family, law and country.A Brief Look Inside:EVERY GOOD BOOK CONTAINS A WORLD FAR DEEPERthan the surface of its pages. The characters and their world come alive,and the characters and its world still live on.Conversation Starters is peppered with questions designed tobring us beneath the surface of the pageand invite us into the world that lives on.These questions can be used to..Create Hours of Conversation: Foster a deeper understanding of the book Promote an atmosphere of discussion for groups Assist in the study of the book, either individually or corporately Explore unseen realms of the book as never seen before

Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire.

July 1914. Young Englishwoman Vivian Rose Spencer is running up a mountainside in an ancient land, surrounded by figs and cypresses. Soon she will discover the Temple of Zeus, the call of adventure, and the ecstasy of love. Thousands of miles away a twenty-year old Pathan, Qayyum Gul, is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army.July, 1915. Qayyum Gul is returning home after losing an eye at Ypres, his allegiances in tatters. Viv is following the mysterious trail of her beloved. They meet on a train to Peshawar, unaware that a connection is about to be forged between their lives one that will reveal itself fifteen years later, on the Street of Storytellers, when a brutal fight for freedom, an ancient artefact and a mysterious green-eyed woman will bring them together again.A powerful story of friendship, injustice, love and betrayal, A God in Every Stone carries you across the globe, into the heart of empires fallen and conquered, reminding us that we all have our place in the chaos of history and that so much of what is lost will not be forgotten.

In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts.But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in its evocation of time and place, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.

Summer, 1914. Young Englishwoman Vivian Rose Spencer is in an ancient land, about to discover the Temple of Zeus, the call of adventure, and love. Thousands of miles away a twenty-year-old Pathan, Qayyum Gul, is learning about brotherhood and loyalty in the British Indian army. Summer, 1915. Viv has been separated from the man she loves; Qayyum has lost an eye at Ypres. They meet on a train to Peshawar, unaware that a connection is about to be forged between their lives - one that will reveal itself fifteen years later when anti-colonial resistance, an ancient artefact and a mysterious woman will bring them together again.

What is the moment, that exact moment when everything changes and the friends you have been, become the lovers you might be?Soul mates from birth Karim and Raheen finish one another's sentences, speak in anagrams and lie spine to spine as children. They are irrevocably bound to one another and to Karachi, Pakistan. It beats in their hearts - violent, polluted, corrupt, vibrant, brave and ultimately, home. However, Raheen is fiercely loyal and naively blinkered and she resents Karim's need to map their city, his need to name its streets and to expand the privileged world they know. When Karim is forced to leave for London their differences of opinion become a painful quarrel. As the years go by they let a barrier of silence build between them until, finally, they are brought together during a dry summer of strikes and ethnic violence and their relationship is poised between strained friendship and fated love. Impassioned and touching, KARTOGRAPHY is a love song to Karachi. In her extraordinary new novel, Kamila Shamsie shows us that whatever happens in the world, we must never forget the complicated war in our own hearts.

In 1986, Pakistan's greatest poet was found brutally murdered - beaten to death by government thugs.Two years later, his lover, fearless activist Samina Akram, disappears. Her daughter, Aasmani, has always assumed her mother simply abandoned her - since she had left so many times before to follow the Poet into exile.But now, working at Pakistan's first independent TV station, Aasmani runs into an old friend of her mother's who hands her a letter written recently, in the Poet and Samina's secret code. As more letters arrive, Aasmani becomes certain that they will lead her to Samina.Despite menacing signs, disbelief from her family and worries of her new lover, Aasmani decodes the letters and searches for their source.But if she manages to locate it, will she find what she's looking for?Merging the personal with the political, Broken Verses is at once a thrilling journey through modern-day Pakistan and an intimate mother-daughter story that asks how to forgive a mother who leaves.

Raheen and her best friend, Karim, share an idyllic childhood in upper-class Karachi.Their parents were even once engaged to each others' partners until they rematched in what they call "the fiance swap." But as adolescence distances the friends, Karim takes refuge in maps while Raheen searches for the secret behind her parents' exchange.What she uncovers reveals not just a family's but a country's turbulent history-and a grown-up Raheen and Karim are caught between strained friendship and fated love.A love story with a family mystery at its heart, Kartography is a dazzling novel by a young writer of astonishing maturity and exhilarating style. Shamsie transports us to a world we have not often seen in fiction-vibrant, dangerous, sensuous Pakistan.But even as she takes us far from the familiar, her story of passion and family secrets rings universally true.

Nagasaki, 9 d'agost del 1945: La Hiroko surt al balcó, des d'on veu les terrasses que s'eleven al cel. La jove té 21 anys i està enamorada de l'home alemany amb qui es casarà. En una

Quinta novela de la escritora pakistaní Kamila Shamsie, Sombras quemadas ha marcado un punto de inflexión en el conjunto de su obra. Tanto críticos como escritores han elogiado su prosa viva y su formidable vision de los acontecimientos historicos. A lo largo de seis decadas desde Japon en los ultimos dias de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y la India al borde de la particion, hasta Pakistan en la decada de los ochenta, Nueva York tras el 11-S y Afganistan durante los bombardeos subsiguientes al atentado, las historias comunes a dos familias convergen hacia un destino comun.Y en el centro del relato, un personaje exquisitamente delineado: Hiroko Tanaka, una joven maestra empleada en una fabrica de municion en Nagasaki que aguarda con impaciencia el final de la contienda para casarse con el joven aleman Konrad Weiss. Una mañana de agosto de 1945, en apenas unos segundos, una cegadora explosion de luz y fuego destruye todo lo que ha conocido y amado. Como unico recuerdo de su pasado, conservara el contorno de los pajaros de su kimono de seda que la radiacion ha marcado en su espalda para siempre. Hiroko huira muy lejos, y cuando el amor vuelva a surgir en su vida, debera hacer frente a multiples y dolorosos desafios.El hilo del relato, tensado por el suspense, no solo guia al lector a traves de un esclarecedor recorrido por el siglo que acaba de terminar, sino que proporciona claves sobre el actual: sobre su lado oscuro, sin duda, pero tambien sobre los caminos que conducen a un espacio de esperanza.

LA NOVELA GANADORA DEL WOMENS PRIZE 2018.¿Hasta donde llegarías para salvar a quien más quieres? La historia de una familia atrapada en el conflicto entre Occidente y el Estado Islámico.Isma, una joven musulmana britanica, ha conseguido independizarse de su familia y piensa ir a Estados Unidos para completar sus estudios. Pero este simple hecho posee una significacion muy especial si consideramos que su padre fue acusado de terrorismo y murio camino de Guantanamo; que su hermano ha decidido unirse al Estado Islamico; que su hermana es una joven muy problematica incapaz de hacer frente a la vida Ese pasado estallara en mil pedazos cuando Isma conozca a Eamonn y las diferencias que parecian superadas vuelvan a irrumpir en la vida de todos."Un relato conmovedor."The Guardian"Un buen novelista desdibuja la linea imaginaria entre nosotros y ellos; Kamila Shamsie pertenece al pequeño grupo de autores que hace olvidar esa linea. Los desterrados es una novela importante,oportuna y necesaria."Rabih Alameddine"Los desterrados me dejo asombrado, estremecido, lleno de admiracion por su coraje y ambicion. Lectura recomendada para los primeros ministros y presidentes de todo el mundo."Peter Carey

Isma, una joven musulmana británica, ha conseguido independizarse de su familia y piensa ir a Estados Unidos para completar sus estudios. Pero este simple hecho posee una significación muy especial si consideramos que su padre fue acusado de terrorismo y murió camino de Guantánamo; que su hermano ha decidido unirse al Estado Islámico; que su hermana es una joven muy problemática incapaz de hacer frente a la vida Ese pasado estallará en mil pedazos cuando Isma conozca a Eamonn y las diferencias que parecían superadas vuelvan a irrumpir en la vida de todos.

The spirit of Elena Ferrante haunts this tale of a friendship forged in Karachi' - Sunday Times'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' - Madeline Miller'A shining tour de force' - Ali Smith, Guardian Summer ReadingCHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL AND FINANCIAL TIMES_______________A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for FictionSometimes it was as though the forty years of friendship between them was just a lesson in the unknowability of other people...Maryam and Zahra.In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party. That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome.Zahra and Maryam.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2017 LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017 A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A TELEGRAPH BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 AN EVENING STANDARD BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 `Breathtaking' Ali Smith `Powerful' Guardian `Fearless' The Times `Brave and brilliant' Sunday Times How can love survive betrayal? For as long as they can remember, siblings Isma, Aneeka and Parvaiz have had nothing but each other. But darker, stronger forces will divide Parvaiz from his sisters and drive him to the other side of the world, as he sets out to fulfil the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.

En 1986, Raheen y su mejor amigo Karim tienen trece años y viven en Karachi, al sur de Pakistán. Unidos desde la cuna, ambos se entienden casi sin hablar y cada uno sueña los sueños del otro. Comparten una infancia idílica en la alta sociedad de Karachi con sus respectivos padres, que también son íntimos amigos. Los dos matrimonios estuvieron comprometidos a la pareja contraria antes de producirse lo que llaman, entre risas y bromas, un «trueque de parejas». Pero ahora, esa estrecha relación se va a romper, cuando la familia de Karim decide dejar Karachi, que se ha convertido en el escenario de violentos enfrentamientos interétnicos, para trasladarse a Londres. La noche de su partida, Raheen se da cuenta de que «mis lágrimas eran las suyas, y las suyas eran las mías».Mientras el tiempo y la distancia, en plena adolescencia, les separa, Karim y Raheen intentan comprender, cada uno a su manera, su propio pasado. Karim lo hará a través de la cartografía, que para él se ha convertido en un obsesión, buscando en los mapas una manera de enfrentarse al desorden cotidiano. Raheen, por su parte, que ha intentado mantenerse alejada del secreto que se esconde detrás del intercambio de parejas llevado a cabo por sus padres, decide enfrentarse a la verdad, y vuelve dos décadas atrás para enfrentarse a una turbulenta historia, no sólo familiar, sino de todo un país. Según pasan los años, un muro de silencio se levanta entre los dos amigos, hasta que se reencuentran en Karachi, la ciudad de su infancia, en el transcurso de un cálido verano, sacudido por las huelgas y la violencia étnica, durante el cual su relación queda suspendida en un punto intermedio entre la amistad tensa y el amor predestinado.