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Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie

This luminous novel sweeps through generations of conflicts, material and mental, to journey through
the vast landscapes of Hiroko Tanakas life. In 1945, the blinding darkness of Nagasakis white light
swallows everything Hiroko loves: her father, her home and Konrad Weiss. Hauntingly seared by
three black cranes on her back, embroidered into the kimono she is wearing when the explosion
occurs, Hiroko is tattooed by the bombs sinister signature; an eternal reminder of the love she lost.
As she buries Konrads burnt shadow she moves to the enchanting city of Delhi in the last days of the
British Raj, to acquaint with Konrads family and falls under the spell of Sajjad Ashraf, a handsome,
aspirant lawyer with a magical tongue for words. Across the barrier of language, and under the
rustling palm leaves of the Delhi monsoons, Sajjad teaches Hiroko the harmonious enunciations of
Urdu. As they build a life for themselves in the new Pakistan an inescapable sense of uljhan,
melancholy and disquiet, governs even the happier times throughout their lives. Through the eyes of
Hirokos son, Raza, and under the backdrop of September 11th, the novel stretches into the frontiers
of New York and Afghanistan where family and patriotic loyalties come into question. The interplay of
history and personal relationships is tested through the characters individual dilemmas, and is
further expressed by the ways in which morality can be skewed by our implicit allegiances. As Raza
struggles with the suffocating burden of a heavy conscience and the moral predicaments of misguided
youth, lives merge together across borders and the reader is transported through the moral
frameworks intrinsic to natives of the East and West. Every page is doused in emotion so vivid one
cannot escape the imagery crafted by Shamsies words. The helpless sense of never fully belonging is
expressed through her compelling portrayal of individual sentiments and the implosion of emotions
in the face of displacement in conflict. She evokes thought, both rational and emotional, at every stage
of the characters lives as they come to terms with their own confused realities and their desires to be
accepted and understood. The fourth and final section of the book titled, "The Speed Necessary to
Replace Loss", is taken from Michael Ondaatje's, The English Patient; Shamsie beginning her book
where Ondaatje ends his, with a mushroom cloud over Asia. The reader is left feeling helpless and
provoked as the sequence of events is unpredictable right to the very last page. This book is a powerful
depiction of individual dispositions in the face of conflict, further enriched by the convincing
characters, all of whom possess a unique charm because of their flaws.
War and Pieces: A Review of Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows
History is a deep sea, and once you fall in it's easy to fall forever. Impossible questions will crowd your
mind as you tumble -- how did it happen? Why did they do it? Is everything determined, or just
intertwined?
Kamila Shamsie's new novel, Burnt Shadows (Picador, 2009), which was shortlisted this year for the
Orange Prize, is deeply concerned with all of these questions, without trying to offer easy answers.
The narrative skips like a stone -- from Nagasaki during World War II to Old Delhi in the last days of
the Raj to the Pakistani city of Karachi, and ultimately to New York City in 2001 -- dragging fragments
of each location and culture into the next, binding elements of history and humanity that are both
distant and seemingly unrelated.
Any review you read of Burnt Shadows will make a point of calling the story ambitious, and it's easy to
see why. The book is complex and sweeping in scope, seeking to tie together not just the disparate
lives of its inhabitants, but also several of the most noted international tragedies in recent history.
And yet the heart of the thing (for even vertiginously epic tales need a center around which to spin) is
quite simple: a Japanese woman named Hiroko Tanaka who, in the wartime atmosphere of distrust
and air raid sirens, happens to fall in love.

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Hiroko's relationship with her fiance, the German emigre Konrad Weiss, is chemically beautiful -- the
reaction of their antagonistic elements is tangible but subtle, allowing us to savor the shy
determination with which Hiroko insists on using the honorific "Konrad-san" whenever she addresses
her lover.
Shamsie's interest, however, isn't in teasing out the intricacies and intimacies of a liaison between
oddfellows, and Konrad's death in the American bombing of Nagasaki is the first of several rude
surprises kick-starting the pace of the storyline. This isn't to say that his death, or the bomb, is dealt
with lightly -- indeed, the image of Konrad, reduced by the atomic explosion to a smudge on the
stones of the city streets, is one of the most powerful and disturbing in the novel. But one feels keenly
the loss of their love story, not only for the obvious tragedy it represents, but because we are denied
any further entry into it.
This more than anything is the weakness of Burnt Shadows: Shamsie does a beautiful job of building
worlds, only to take them away again in a sudden and breathless fashion. We follow Hiroko to Delhi,
where she comes to live with Konrad's estranged sister Ilse and her husband James Burton. Hiroko, in
spite of developing a close friendship with Ilse, is at sea amidst the wealth and privilege of the Burton
household, and falls into a complicated but tender romance with the Burtons' employee Sajjad Ashraf,
who tutors her in Urdu.
From there, the story is once again splintered and reassembled, with Hiroko and Sajjad living in
Pakistan after being denied re-entry into India following the Partition. We see pieces of lives -- the
Ashrafs' son, Raza, befriending a young Afghan refugee (who is fooled by Raza's appearance and
facility with languages into believing him to be a Hazara Afghan), Ilse leaving James Burton and
raising their son Harry in New York City -- and we see lives collide -- Harry, a young CIA agent,
reestablishing contact with Hiroko and Sajjad, and then Harry again, taking Raza quietly into the
world of covert operations after an incident which leaves the boy grieving and guilt-stricken. Like
Hiroko and Konrad's original love story, each of these moments is rendered in vivid detail. But in
spite of the intense reality of the scenes, we are rarely given time to savor their emotional aftershocks.
And that's a shame. Burnt Shadows does a compelling job of implicating the world in our minute
heartbreaks; of teasing out the potential for politics, however distant they may feel, to break into our
seemingly self-contained existences and make hash of our plans. However, Shamsie's at her best in
this roaming epic when she's at her most microscopic. As the novel's first section draws to a close, the
narrative becomes fractured, in keeping with Hiroko's experience of the atomic blast. In the midst of
the confusion, we experience her discovery of Konrad's death as a mere fragment of a scene -- almost
a haiku -- couched in blank pages like an interrupted thought. This brevity, because of its
psychological context, is as powerful as any moment before or to come:
"There. See? There." "How can you be sure it's him?" "No one else in Nagasaki could draw such a long
shadow."
At home in implication and poetics, Shamsie is able to make us draw breath at the slightest touch, and
as such it's somewhat disappointing that she insists on using so many broad narrative strokes.
Burnt Shadows: Kamila Shamsie
Novels spanning decades, following family histories definitely catch my attention. So when I picked
up Kamila Shamsies Burnt Shadows, I expected a rich story and more. Here is a glimpse into what
the novel is about

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Hiroko Tanaka loses her soon-to-be fianc, Konrad Weiss, in the Nagasaki bombing of 1945.
Shattered in more ways than one, she travels to Delhi to seek out Konrads family, to treasure any
links to Konrad she might find. Hiroko though falls in love with Sajjad, an employee at Konrads sister
Elizabeths house. From Delhi, Shamsie takes us to Pakistan, Afghanistan and New York, as we follow
two families and their lives.
The faint whiff of romance hangs perpetually throughout Burnt Shadows, which contains few people
but many places and many emotions. Konrad and Hirokos union is shortlived as within the opening
pages, the German dies an untimely death. Theirs is a friendly, open relationship. Quite the opposite
of the relationship between Konrads sister and her husband James. We meet them soon, as Hiroko
lands in Delhi and is taken in by Konrads family for a few days on account of her ill health. Shamsie
gives us peeks into a romance turned sour over the years, through Elizabeths short, wistful
reminiscences.
Elizabeth looked at his jaw. There was still a spot of blood there. For a moment all she wanted to do
was lean in and place her mouth against his skin, feel the tingle of aftershave against her lips and hear
him sigh in satisfaction and relief as he used to do during their early married life when some
expression of physical desire was Elizabeths signal that whatever squabble had sprung up between
them was now ended.
Against this crumbling marriage that reflects the dying embers of the British Empire at the time,
Shamsie brings new hopes and desires in the form of Hiroko and Sajjad. Though considered a near
impossible union by James and Elizabeth due to the vast differences in culture and geography, Hiroko
and Sajjad defy all assumptions and get married. But they are united by different things. Since
Sajjads family is torn by the ongoing Partition of India and Hiroko has already undergone a partition
under different circumstances, they havent seen each other in their true world(s), which anyway
doesnt exist anymore, for either of them. Sajjad defines the undercurrent of their attraction
beautifully,
I have to learn how to live in a new world. With new rules. As you have had to do. No, as you are
doing. Perhaps it would be less lonely for both of us to have a companion. Some constancy is
comforting during change.
Such brilliant writing and elaboration of thoughts dominate Shamsies novel and these are the same
tools she uses to leap over time and space smoothly. We are rapidly introduced to Hiroko and Sajjads
son Raza and then later on Henry, James and Elizabeths son and even Henrys daughter Kim. Not
only are we given an inside look into their marriages, friendships and parental roles but also into their
individual characteristics.
Apart from this, Shamsie also tackles politics, particularly that of the US with the rest of the globe,
which was a bit too deep for me to grasp completely. A lack of interest in politics did not help me in
furthering my understanding of this aspect of the novel as well.
As you can see Shamsies canvas is huge, but the book is a slow read. Without much of an ending to
speak of, Burnt Shadows becomes a simmering pot of travesties crossed by these people and by the
entire world itself. Case in point is the way the 9/11 tragedy is softly dropped in the background of
conversations to heighten its impact on people in the novel as well as the world.

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Shamsies writing must be lauded for techniques such as these, which provoke the shrewd reader into
thinking. I am afraid I am not shrewd enough for this book so after a point it began to drag. It was
only Shamsies superb wordage that sustained me till the end, as I stumbled through her worlds
without a map.
Review: Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie
There was something she had learnt to recognise after Nagasaki, after Partition: those who could step
out from loss, and those who would remain mired in it. (p. 149)
Burnt Shadows is a moving story of war and prejudice spanning more than 50 years and 5 countries.
It begins in 1945 Nagasaki, just before the bomb drops. Hiroko Tanaka is 21 years old and engaged to
Konrad Weiss, a German living in Japan. The reader has just enough time to appreciate her idyllic
world and the promise of love, when suddenly everything changes. Hiroko survived; Konrad did not.
The title comes from a description of the bombs aftermath:
Days no, weeks after the bomb and everything still smelt of burning. I walked through it those
strangely angled trees above the melted stone, somehow thats what struck me the most and I
looked for Konrads shadow. I found it. Or I found something that I believed was it. On a rock. (p. 78)
Hiroko leaves Japan for India, where Konrads sister Ilse lives with her British husband James.
Hiroko and Ilse become close friends. Hiroko marries Shajjad Ashraf, and in 1947 the Partition forces
them to start a new life in Pakistan. They have a son, Raza, and remain friendly with Ilse and her son
Harry. Hiroko is a constant presence, struggling throughout her life to come to terms with the impact
of the bomb. The focus of the story gradually shifts to Raza, whose mixed ethnicity creates both
opportunities and challenges. The final chapters are set in post-9/11 New York City, where a country
built through immigration is suddenly seized by fear, and driven to conformity:
But then, things shifted. The island seemed tiny, peoples views drunken. How could a place so filled
with immigrants take the idea of patriotism so seriously? (p. 295)
There were several points where I was afraid the book might develop into one big clich, but
fortunately that never happened. In every era and every setting, Kamila Shamsie maintained a steady
drumbeat of messages about war, race, and bigotry. And the ending was far from neat and tidy,
clearly showing these issues will remain with us for a long time.
Burnt Shadows, By Kamila Shamsie
At the core of Kamila Shamsie's new novel is the idea that an individual's identity is not a fixed block
that can be slotted into an assigned square, but essentially liquid, evolving as life flows. Like water
seeking its own level, Shamsie's characters and there are many in this novel which has the sweep of
a century and the scale of the planet blend into new surroundings, maintaining their humanity.
They are victims of forces larger than themselves: those who emerge are, in the end, not triumphant;
they have survived.
Yet those with the power to send aeroplanes into skyscrapers, drop bombs that can wipe out cities, or
draw borders between people to create new nations see individuals in a dehumanised form: as parts of
groups they hate, be it by religion or nationality. Their decisions tear apart countless lives.

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Burnt Shadows has many such people, drawn from Japan, Germany, Britain, America, India, Pakistan
and Afghanistan. These individuals lead global lives even before globalisation became a buzzword;
their ethnicity, language and nationality are mere accidents of birth. A seminal event, not fate, casts
their lives across the globe. The novel celebrates how they cling to inner selves in spite of displaced
lives.
There is Hiroko Tanaka, daughter of a "traitor" father, who hates Japan's militarism. She must atone
by working in an arms factory even though Japan is losing the war. She speaks German and translates
for Konrad Weiss, who has come to Nagasaki because his half-sister Ilse and brother-in-law James
Burton would rather not have a German relative with them in colonial Delhi while world war rages in
Europe.
When the atomic bomb is dropped "to save American lives", Konrad perishes. But Hiroko survives,
bearing the scars of the bomb on her back. Shamsie describes in achingly moving prose the
incineration of the city, and the melting of Hiroko's skin, the scars clinging to her back forming
permanent, unfeeling shadows, like black birds.
Hiroko seizes the opportunity to leave for India, and turns up at the Burtons' home, unsure of what to
expect. Ilse who is now Elizabeth warms to her. Hiroko begins learning Urdu from Sajjad Ashraf,
a young Indian Muslim and legal apprentice of Burton. Inevitably, they fall in love, despite the
Burtons' initial misgivings.
The threat of Partition is ever-present, and though Sajjad does not want to leave India, the Burtons
convince him, sending him to Turkey until the violence subsides. However, India won't let him back
because they left during the Partition, and reluctantly the Ashrafs move to Karachi, with Sajjad as a
mohajir: the not-endearing term for refugees from India.
The novel turns darker: Raza, the Ashrafs' son, a misfit among pure Pakistanis ("Pak" in Pakistan
means pure), makes friends with Afghan refugees. Hiroko and Sajjad welcome Harry Burton, Ilse's
son, to their home. It is 1983; Harry is now an American, as Ilse has left James for the US. Ostensibly
a consular officer, his real job is to help the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The plot
moves inevitably towards 9/11, at a quickened pace, with edgier, less lyrical language, hurtling to an
end at Guantanamo Bay, where no norms apply.
Shamsie's challenge is to build the architecture through strong characters without letting the burden
of history crush the structure. In Hiroko, she has created just such a character. Some of the minor
characters aren't always capable of bearing that burden. They remain true to the message Shamsie
conveys of the common humanity of our interwoven lives. But the pace compresses them. Shamsie
has squeezed a violent century's universe into a ball, and rolled it forward with an overwhelming
question: Why?
When worlds collide
The huge ambition of Kamila Shamsie's fifth novel is announced in the prologue. As an unnamed
captive is unshackled and stripped naked in readiness for the anonymity of an orange jumpsuit, he
wonders: "How did it come to this?" The vastness of the question as applied to a prisoner in
Guantnamo is a challenge to which this epic yet skilfully controlled novel rises in oblique and
unexpected ways.
Unfolding in four sections, the novel traces the shared histories of two families, from the final days of
the second world war in Japan, and India on the brink of partition in 1947, to Pakistan in the early

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1980s, New York in the aftermath of 11 September and Afghanistan in the wake of the ensuing US
bombing campaign. At its heart is the beautifully drawn Hiroko Tanaka, first seen in Nagasaki in
August 1945 as a young schoolteacher turned munitions factory worker whose artist father is branded
a traitor for his outbursts against the emperor and kamikaze militarism. She falls in love with a lanky,
russet-haired idealist from Berlin, Konrad Weiss, with whom she shares - along with other key
characters - a love of languages. But their romance is curtailed by the flash of light that renders
Konrad a shadow on stone and burns the birds on Hiroko's kimono into her back, a fusion of "charred
silk, seared flesh".
Hiroko finds refuge in Old Delhi, in the twilight of the raj, with her dead fianc's sister Ilse and her
English husband James Burton. Befriended by the unhappy Ilse, Hiroko is more drawn to Sajjad Ali
Ashraf, a dashing Muslim employee who agrees to teach her Urdu. Her hosts discourage their
romance ("His world is so alien to yours"), even misinterpreting a moment of tenderness as one of
predation by Sajjad. Yet the couple grow closer as partition sunders Sajjad from Delhi as shockingly as
Nagasaki was lost to Hiroko.
In Karachi, the saga of the Weiss-Burtons and Tanaka-Ashrafs shifts to Hiroko and Sajjad's son Raza,
a linguist given to impersonating Afghan refugees from the Soviet invasion of 1979, and James and
Ilse's son Henry, a Kipling-like figure mourning a lost Indian childhood (his daughter is named Kim).
As Harry Burton, Henry has transferred his idealistic allegiance to his adoptive US, becoming a covert
CIA operative in cold-war Pakistan. Raza's naive bid for a kind of gap year in Afghanistan's training
camps with his Afghan friend Abdullah brings adventures with gunrunners and poppy growers, but
also sobering loss for the family and enduring guilt for Raza.
After Hiroko decamps to New York, disgusted by nuclear posturing between India and Pakistan, and
encounters Abdullah as a taxi driver, the final section alternates between an apartment she shares
with Kim, overlooking the smouldering fires of Ground Zero, and Afghanistan, where Harry and his
interpreter Raza have joined forces in a private security firm. CIA backing for the mujahideen's
resistance war, and abandonment of them once the Soviet army withdrew, is seen as a grim policy
failure whose legacy is being reaped in "Jihadi blowback". But pivotal to the novel's final betrayals,
guilt and loss is a conversation fraught with suspicion and misunderstanding between Kim and
Abdullah. As Abdullah says in exasperation, "everyone just wants to tell you what they know about
Islam, how they know so much more than you do, what do you know, you've just been a Muslim all
your life".
Through its succession of seemingly disparate, acutely observed worlds, Burnt Shadows reveals the
impact of shared histories, hinting at larger tragedies through individual loss. The two families, while
watching each other's back, can also prove instrumental in each other's destruction. There are minor
flaws in plotting, and occasional excesses - gorilla suits as modes of escape, or soft toys
sentimentalised as road kill to make a point. But the subtlety lies in repeated patterns of allegiance
and estrangement, betrayal and atonement, in the echoes between kamikaze pilots and suicide
bombers, or between Ilse's alacrity in branding Sajjad as a rapist in the novel's Forsterian vignette and
Kim's suspicion of Muslims after 9/11.
The final section's title, "The Speed Necessary to Replace Loss", is taken from The English Patient, a
guiding spirit, though this novel begins where Michael Ondaatje's ends, with a mushroom cloud over
Asia. Anita Desai's influence is also palpable, in a pre-partition Old Delhi steeped in Urdu poetry. Yet
Shamsie's voice is clear and compelling, with a welcome spareness, free of the sometimes cloying
archness of earlier books.

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The historical threads between Nagasaki and Guantnamo are implicit, though crucial. The atomic
age marked the start of the cold war, fought hot in proxy wars from Vietnam to Afghanistan, with
blood spilt by the superpowers' hi-tech weaponry. As Abdullah says bitterly, "My brother died
winning their Cold War." In Hiroko's view, all it takes to wipe people out without scruple is to "put
them in a little corner of the big picture" - whatever the "war" in the frame. A similar logic informs a
chilling conversation about interrogation techniques. "What wouldn't I do if I thought it was
effective?" Harry muses. "Almost nothing. Children are out of bounds. Rape is out of bounds. But
otherwise ... what works, works." Tellingly, he asks not to be quoted to his daughter.
The identity of the Guantnamo captive remains unclear till the powerful denouement, as events
unfold with a malign logic whereby even a man's stooping for a cricket ball can be fatally
misconstrued. Any reader anticipating a predictable yarn about the radicalisation of Islamist youth
may feel cheated. Far more, I suspect, will feel challenged and enlightened, possibly provoked, and
undoubtedly enriched.
Book Summary
Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps
onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is
suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic 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, two years later, Hiroko travels to
Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her
husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.
With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again,
in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and
political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the 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 these families together over decades and
generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.
Reading Guide Questions Print Excerpt
Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers!
About this Guide
The following author biography and list of questions about Burnt Shadows are intended as resources
to aid individual readers and book groups who would like to learn more about the author and this
book. We hope that this guide will provide you a starting place for discussion, and suggest a variety of
perspectives from which you might approach Burnt Shadows.
About this Book
Burnt Shadows begins in Nagasaki at the end of World War II, and ends shortly after the 9/11 attacks
on the World Trade Center. In between, the characters are tossed upon the swells of a turbulent halfcentury, their lives touched by the partition of India, the nuclear arms race, the rise of Islamic
fundamentalism in South Asia, and the suppression of liberties in America after 9/11. But the novel
does not merely present these events as a backdrop, rather it shows that human beings must reckon
with them in highly personal ways; that an historic gesture may move a country's border (as with

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partition) or devastate a population (as with the atomic bomb), but, in the end, history is also a story
about individual people and relationships.
A novel of uncommon ambition and scope, Burnt Shadows offers much to discuss.
Discussion Questions
Early in the novel, Hiroko observes that during the World War II everything has been "distilled
or distorted into its most functional form," including a vegetable patch where once Azaleas
grew, and she asks, "What prompted this falling-off of love?" Can you find other places in the
novel where this idea is expressed? Is there a similarity between the garden and a suicide
bomber?
How does Hiroko resist being simply Hibakusha, a victim of the bomb, and in what ways is she
powerless to change this perception of her? Consider also how it affects her son, Raza. Is it
impossible to escape certain legacies?
Discuss the different reasons that Konrad, Elizabeth, Sajjad and Harry leave their home in
India, and why Hiroko leaves Japan, and then Pakistan. What does it mean to have a home,
and to be displaced? How is it different when you don't have a choice to stay? Ultimately, do
the characters ever have a country to call their own?
Hiroko is immovable in her opinion about the atomic bomb. What does it mean to have a direct
and highly personal connection to an earth-changing event like the bombing of Nagasaki, or
9/11? Is it possible for anyone so directly affected by the violence of these events to regard them
with historic perspective? How are Kim and Hiroko different from one another in this regard?
Consider their conversation about Nagasaki on pgs 294 to 295.
The characters in Burnt Shadows sometimes find that their ideological beliefs can be
vanquished by basic human feelings of love and hate. And sometimes the reverse happens as
well. Why are individuals so often in conflict with their ideals, and how does the novel illustrate
this conflict?
What does Sajjad mean when he says on pg 52 that he wants a "modern wife"? How do the
women in Burnt Shadows each express their independence? And in what ways are they still
captive to tradition?
Why does Elizabeth at first resist Sajjad and Hiroko's affection for one another? Is she just
trying to be practical? What is the nature of her resentment and concern?
Hiroko, Sajjad, and Raza each have a love of languages. What does it mean to learn another
language, and why are languages (and their translation back and forth) important to these
characters?
Discuss the reasons that Abdullah joins a mujahideen training camp. Why is it tempting to
Raza as well? What social pressures and conditions do you think could inspire you to take up
arms in a similar fashion, or to become radicalized?
Shortly after Sajjad tells Hiroko that "everything about you is beautiful," Elizabeth Burton,
reflecting upon the Himalayas, thinks "what a pity beauty could be so meaningless." What does
this novel, which begins with the scarring of a woman's back, have to say about beauty and
truth?
Who, if anyone, is to blame for the death of Sajjad?
Is it irresponsible for Harry to send Raza to Afghanistan, given that he had promised Hiroko to
keep him safe? Discuss his reasons for sending him, and Raza's reasons for going.
Steve is highly suspicious of Raza's past, in particular his early brush with the mujahideen.
While Raza is, in truth, largely motivated by personal loyalties, is Steve nonetheless right to be
suspicious of him? Is Steve's paranoia a widespread phenomenon in the United States?
Globally?

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The forces of oppression and liberation course through this novel from the Raj, to the
partition of India, to fundamentalist Islam's control of women in Pakistan, to the Patriot Act. Is
Burnt Shadows asking what it means to liberate one's self, to be free both personally and
politically? Is there a difference? Consider, as well, Elizabeth's flight from her husband, and her
life in New York.
Discuss Kim Burton's actions at the Canadian border. Would you have done the same thing?
How does this act illustrate the larger themes of the novel?

Kamila Shamsie
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Kamila Shamsie (born 1973) is a Pakistani novelist who writes in the English language.
Contents
Background
Career
Books
Background
Shamsie is the daughter of the famous literary journalist, compiler and editor Muneeza Shamsie,
niece of Attia Hosain and granddaughter of the writer, Begum Jahanara Habibullah. Her sister Saman
Shamsie used to be a college counselor and taught O-level Physics and SAT writing and reading at
Karachi Grammar School. She was brought up in Karachi and attended Karachi Grammar School. She
has a BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College, and an MFA from the MFA Program for Poets &
Writers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was influenced by the Kashmiri poet
Agha Shahid Ali.
Career
Shamsie wrote her first novel, In The City by the Sea, while still at UMass, and it was published in
1998. It was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK, and Shamsie received the Prime
Minister's Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her second novel, Salt and Saffron, followed in
2000, after which she was selected as one of Orange's 21 Writers of the 21st century. Her third novel,
Kartography, received widespread critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys
award in the UK. Both Kartography and her next novel, Broken Verses, have won the Patras Bokhari
Award from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan. Her fifth novel Burnt Shadows was shortlisted for the
Orange Prize for Fiction. Her books have been translated in a number of languages.
She is also a reviewer and columnist primarily for The Guardian and has been a judge for several
literary awards, including the Orange Award for New Writers and the Guardian First Book Award.
In 2009, Kamila Shamsie donated the short story "The Desert Torso" to Oxfam's Ox-Tales project
four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. Her story was published in the Air collection.
She participated in the Bush Theatre's 2011 project Sixty Six, with a piece based on a chapter of the
King James Bible. In 2013 she was included in the Granta list of 20 best young writers.

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Books

In the City by the Sea (1998) ISBN 0-14-028181-9

Salt and Saffron (2000) ISBN 1-58234-261-X
Kartography (2002) ISBN 0-15-602973-1
Broken Verses (2005) ISBN 0-15-603053-5
Offence : the Muslim case (2009) ISBN 1-906497-03-6
Burnt Shadows (2009) ISBN 0-312-55187-8
A God in Every Stone (2014) ISBN 1408847206