Kamila Shamsie is the author of seven 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. Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award 2017. 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
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 I've 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 * Shamsie's 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. It's 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) * Home Fire is utterly contemporary and deeply original too -- Arifa Akbar * Evening Standard * Home Fire is a literary thriller about prejudice and the slide into radicalisation, but it is also an expansive novel about love ... The ending seems alternately as if it were a made-for-television event that is impossible to draw yourself away from and a morality play that underlines the folly of our political zeitgeist. I read the book twice trying to decide which of the two it was, but mostly because I had fallen under its spell -- Rahul Jacob * Financial Times * A provocative work from a brave author ... which will inspire the admiration of many * Irish Times * Shamsie handles the story with impressive dexterity, right up to its shocking and strangely beautiful ending. Her prose is propulsive and unfailingly elegant, and her eye for detail is acute ... brave and brilliant novel -- Edmund Gordon * Sunday Times * Urgent ... Shamsie expertly distils a vast socio-political landscape into human bodies -- Preti Taneja * New Statesman * Outstanding ... Shamsie tackles personal and political questions with a light touch and an acute sense of injustice ... What makes this intense novel so compelling is her lyricism -- Sarah A Smith * Literary Review * An intelligent, thought-provoking and beautifully written novel about family, identity and divided loyalties, it elegantly echoes Sophocles' Antigone -- Simon Humphreys * Mail on Sunday * Kamila Shamsie's heartrending seventh novel pits the political against the personal as a family's love and loyalty are tested to the core ... Shamsie brilliantly captures the desperation of the family and their efforts to bring Parvaiz home to London in a devastatingly good novel * Sunday Express * The ties of familial love are pulled taut in this beautiful book * Red * One of the best novels of the year ... magnificent ... Home Fire is insistently intelligent without becoming didactic ... conveyed in prose of stunning suppleness and economy ... Home Fire is everything literary fiction should be - an exciting, beautiful, profound novel of lasting value that deserves laurels. I hope the Booker judges will agree -- James McNamara * Spectator * Shamsie's prowess as a storyteller infuses Home Fire with an addictive vitality ... It is not just the skill with which Shamsie wraps this story around its Sophoclean bones that makes Home Fire distinctive; it is also the care with which she humanizes her characters * Prospect * Shamsie's timely fiction probes the roots of radicalism and the pull of family * O Magazine * Examines what it is to be a British Muslim and subtly considers the choices faced by those who crave power ... Gripping * Scotsman *