Why Best of Friends? What was the kernel that inspired it?
Years ago my sister observed that the friends we make as adults are our friends because we have something in common with them, but our childhood friends are our friends because they’ve always been our friends. We were probably in our late 20s when she said it and it’s felt increasingly true as the decades go on — I’ve found myself returning again and again to that idea of childhood friends with whom you no longer have very much in common and yet the bond between you remains strong.
In making Maryam and Zahra 14 when we meet them, was there something in particular you wanted to explore about womanhood and friendship?
I wanted us to meet them at a time when they’ve left childhood behind but they aren’t yet adults — so yes, it’s that entry to womanhood. They’re both becoming aware of their own sexuality, but in different ways — Maryam understands she is an object of desire and Zahra experiences desire. Men start to look at them differently, and that brings its own possibilities and complications. They’re also old enough to be responsible for their actions and consequences — but also old enough to understand each other’s failings and choose to forgive them.
Maryam is socialising with those in some of the highest places of political power. Zahra is at the top of her field as a human rights lawyer. Is it contemporary society you’re aiming to shine a light on, or friendship, in giving them these different career paths?
I didn’t really view their friendship and the contemporary world as separate things. Children might be able to some extent to cocoon themselves within a friendship but part of being adults is being in the world. And what your world looks like is very much a product of politics. As a writer, I always want the very intimate stories of my characters to also reflect larger stories and conflicts — and I’d hope that the novel makes people think both about friendship and the contemporary world. When I write a novel all kinds of things that interest me go into it — it’s ultimately down to the readers, rather than me, to decide in which corners they want to shine the light of their attention.
If you had to recommend 5 books on the theme of friendship, what would they be and why?
Instead of 5 books let me give you 8:
Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan quartet
Ali Smith’s Seasonal quartet
The first is the more obvious one — most people who hear the phrase ‘friendship novels’ thinks first of Lenu and Lila, and for good reason. Ferrante’s quartet is a brilliant look at female friendship in its ambivalent form — as much jealousy in there as love from a very early stage. Read it and then read Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet which is teeming with friendships, many of them unexpected, all filled with lightness and joy. Both writers get it absolutely right.
— Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury) is out now.
Best of Friends
From the bestselling author of Home Fire
Sometimes 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.
In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways. Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it - Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision?
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