Book Review – Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie
Epic Novel by Pakistani Author Spans Six Decades of World Events
Sep 3, 2009
A novel that spans the globe and the latter half of the 20th century up until present day, Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury, 2009) is an epic story that also involves the reader on a very personal level in some of the world’s most horrifically violent events.
Burnt Shadows Plot Summary
Burnt Shadows opens in Nagasaki during the last days of World War II. Hiroko Tanaka is in love with the German, Konrad Weiss. When the bomb is dropped, Hiroko’s world disappears before her eyes. Memories make it too hard for her to remain in Japan and two years after the war’s end she travels alone to Delhi to meet Konrad’s half-sister Elizabeth Burton and her English husband, James. Here Hiroko meets and falls in love with their employee Sajjad Ashraf and in marrying him defies many of the expectations of the time.
India is at the end of British rule, and the partition of the country along religious lines results in Hiroko and Sajjad’s eventual settling in the new country of Pakistan, where their son Raza is born and grows up. Raza’s unlikely friendships with a young Afghani boy and CIA agent Harry Burton, son of Elizabeth and James, spark a series of events that propel the characters to the novel’s remarkable climax.
A Novel Spanning Major World Events of the Twentieth Century
Burnt Shadows lives up to its promotion as a “sweeping epic crossing generations, cultures and continents”. The novel is divided into four parts, each framing a major event – the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, the partition of India, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 – without actually describing them. The novel instead focuses on the lives of the families living through the consequences of these events.
The recurring themes of the advantages of multiculturalism as well as worlds lost or forever changed by war and violence are obvious and yet Shamsie manages to keep the story incredibly personal and character driven. Hiroko, in particular, is a real world citizen, long before travelling the globe was within the reach of ordinary people. It is through her that the novel shows the effect of incredibly violent acts of war and terrorism on the individual.
A Thought-provoking and Challenging Novel
Perhaps the most compelling part of Burnt Shadows is how Shamsie takes such huge themes and events and manages to tell the story while avoiding predictable moralising. Tackling any one of these moments in history through a novel is a daunting task, and yet Burnt Shadows covers not one but four major world events without oversimplifying the details. The story is complex yet remains comprehensible and keeps the reader involved in the characters’ lives.
Rather than offering simplistic theories to explain the times she describes, Burnt Shadows leaves the questions open for the reader to ponder. Characters individual motivations are clear, and the “big picture” mentality underlying the actions of the powers in control is also apparent, yet it is the discrepancies between the two that are exposed in this haunting and thought-provoking novel.
About Kamila Shamsie
Kamila Shamsie was born in 1972 in Pakistan. Previous novels include In the City by the Sea, Kartography, Salt and Saffron and Broken Verses. She has received both the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in 1999 and the Patras Bokhari Award in 2004.
Burnt Shadows (ISBN 978-0-7475-9813-8, 365 pages)
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