Burnt Shadows

'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

August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. She is twenty-one and on the verge of marrying Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns whiteIn 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, Hiroko travels to Delhi to find Konrad's relatives and falls in love with their employee, Sajjad Ashraf. 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 different families 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.

'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

About the Author

Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. She is the author of seven previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women’s Bailey’s Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her novel Home Fire won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages.

Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London. @kamilashamsie