Burnt Shadows: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

Kamila Shamsie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 28, 2009

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
An Orange Prize Finalist

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her lover from the veranda as he leaves. Sunlight streams across Urakami Valley, and then the world goes white.

In the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan in search of new beginnings. From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow the entire world over. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events. Burnt Shadows is a story for our time by "a writer of immense ambition and strength. . . . This is an absorbing novel that commands in the reader a powerful emotional and intellectual response" (Salman Rushdie).

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Shamsie’s complex fifth novel, spanning the years between August 1945 and September 2001, is a story of two inextricably connected and politically impacted families. Berliner Konrad Weiss and Hiroko Tanaka, his translator, meet in Nagasaki and plan to marry. But after he is incinerated by the bomb and she is left permanently scarred, Hiroko journeys to Delhi, home of Konrad’s half-sister, Elizabeth Burton, and her British husband, James. Hiroko bonds with James’ assistant, Sajjad. With Partition between India and Pakistan looming, the Burtons return to England, where their son Henry is in boarding school. Hiroko and Sajjad marry, but they’re not allowed back into India, since Sajjad is a Muslim who “chose to leave.” Shamsie takes up their story 35 years later in Karachi, where they have one son, Raza, after bomb-related miscarriages. Henry appears, searching for his past, and offers to assist with Raza’s education; by 2001, they’re working together for the CIA in the U.S. Shamsie offers a moving look at the “complicated shared history” of these two families, an increasingly common facet of globalization. --Deborah Donovan

Review

"Burnt Shadows is one of the most remarkable novels I have read in recent years -- a tour de force of vision, sympathy, language. Kamila Shamsie's subject is brilliantly timely in our era or 'globalization'--at the same time a riveting family saga in which the very concept 'family' is ambitiously and imaginatively examined."--Joyce Carol Oates

"Completely authentic, complex, and breath-stopping."--Emma Thompson

"The most ambitious novel yet by this talented writer. In Burnt Shadows, Kamila Samsie casts her imagination remarkably far and wide, through time and across continents."--Mohsin Hamid

"Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world's many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. Burnt Shadows is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response."--Salman Rushdie

"Ambitious . . . Shamsie's deft touch . . . delicately builds the momentums of everyday life against the insidiously political situation of the time. . . . A tribute to Shamsie's skills." --Chicago Sun-Times

"Burnt Shadows is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author's intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions."--Anita Desai

"One of the finest writers at work anywhere, period . . . A great, absorbing novel, one that will be with us a long time."--Rick Simonson, Elliot Bay Book Company

"Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through--pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through--the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beauty's lair."--Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Picador; Original edition (April 28, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312551878
• ISBN-13: 978-0312551872
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (41 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #65,851 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Then the world goes white.", April 13, 2009

By 

Luan Gaines "luansos" (Dana Point, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Burnt Shadows: A Novel (Paperback)

Shamsie's profound and troubling novel bridges the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 to post-9/11 New York, when terrorism and distrust has defined a country's response to a terrible act. But the heart of the tale begins with language, with the sharing of one language with another, one culture with another. Out of this simple human connection comes a story of history, tragedy and loss. Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki, cannot find an answer to the question that haunts her: After Hiroshima, why a second bomb? Who makes such a decision? From that infamous day through 9/11, the acts of violence in the world are laid bare, countries in conflict, individuals searching for identity and meaning. Putting human faces on those who are affected, Shamsie draws a direct line between actions and actors, the intimate details of personal lives, the aspirations, beliefs and passions of individuals on a collision course with fate.

Surviving Nagasaki with the images of three birds burned into her back, Hiroko has lost the man she loves, Konrad Weiss, a German. Konrad's sister, Ilse, is married to an Englishman, James Burton. Two years later, when Hiroko travels to India to meet Konrad's family, she has no idea that her future will be intricately twined with the Burton's, or that she will meet her future husband, Sajjad Ashraf, in their home. While the Burton's personify England's imperialism and arrogance, Hiroko views life through a different prism, a woman who has lost everything, even her home. History shifts once again, the British departing India on the cusp of the Partition and the swath of violence than ensues. Living in Pakistan with Sajjad, Hiroko's family remains inextricably linked with the Burton's through circumstance, future generations experiencing the reverberations of those connections as they make critical life choices.

This novel opens a window into history, world events as significant as the characters; yet without these wonderfully nuanced characters it would be impossible to understand the ramifications of political evolution, the tangled web of nationalism and individual decisions, how a person can be absorbed, even twisted, by an idea. Bearing the scars of Nagasaki, Hiroko is history's witness, the eyes of humanity searching through the rubble of conflict, her family marked by her tragedy: "Hibakusha. It remained the most hated word in her vocabulary." Hiroko views her life, her grief, through the lens of that experience, a lifelong search for an answer. As time passes, the world grows smaller, from Japan and Nagasaki to India to Pakistan and New York, yet more complicated, more treacherous. Shamsie offers a compelling, disturbing reflection on a world that refuses to learn from the mistakes of the past, a heated response unleashed by fear, the human story writ large. Luan Gaines/2009.

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Necessary Read For A World That Humors Itself Civilized, April 11, 2009

By 

Erika Haase "ErikaHaase" (Bergen County, New Jersey USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Burnt Shadows: A Novel (Paperback)

I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of this book and once I started, found I couldn't be away from it for too long until it was over. Since the summary of the plot line is already in this product description, I won't waste time on that (and I don't want to give anything away). I was incredibly moved by how far out of a judgmental mindset the author took me. Through her realistic and brutally honest portrayals of the ripple affect human atrocities towards each other cause I was touched in a way no other book about racism, tolerance, and world peace has ever managed to accomplish. There is never a moment of judgement towards one side or another, there is only truth and cold hard historical facts being relayed through the voices of her characters. The only biases are those that would be contained within the points of views of the character speaking. By the last pages, I found tears in my eyes as I found myself searching for a happy ending and confronting the realization that the cold honesty of this book maintains itself to the last word. This is not a book that is intended to be pleasant, or leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. This is a book to make you question what you think you know. This is a book that, for me, inspired a moment of reflection and a deep desire to educate future generations about the consequences even one person can have upon the world. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to educate themselves and look beyond their comfort zone. It has earned a place of respect on my book shelf.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Living Beyond the Shadows, May 8, 2009

By 

Beverly Jackson "avid reader" (Huntersville, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Burnt Shadows (Hardcover)

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie is an ambitious epic book that grabs you in the prologue, as an unnamed narrator is disrobed and left to wait naked with only a steel bench to sit on. His thought is - "How did it come to this." How stark is this setting - but the grace of the language warns you that this is a story that you want to see unfold.

The story spans 60 years and takes the reader to five different countries: Nagasaki, August 1945; Delhi 1947; Pakistan 1982-3; and New York/ Afghanistan 2001-2; and the connecting points for two families whose family members will have intimate knowledge of the destruction of war. It all starts in the morning of August 9, 1945 before the bomb was dropped on Nagasaki and we are introduced to schoolteacher, Hiroko Tanaka and a man from Berlin, Konrad Weiss. Both are looking forward to the end of the war so that life gets back to normal and they can be wed. But history has other plans, and Hiroko whose language skills has her working for the Americans during the occupation. Unable to work closely with the "terrorists" who have invaded her country, she flees to Delphi to Konrad's sister. Hiroko is the one character that is present throughout the book and helps thread the book themes together.

This is an elegantly written story that allows the reader to understand how history affects our relationships with each other, Sometimes history defers relationships and others relationships survive despite the history. In each of the major parts of the book - there are historical events that are well known but what is not known is how it affects individuals who only want "to farm their land and raise their families." There are themes of sameness and otherness in different cultures and the issues that one can have when trying to be the same. This book shows how a terrorist is defined is dependent on whose face you are looking at based on your own individual history.

I recommend this book to fans of historical fiction and world events. Readers of literary fiction will enjoy this poetic story with the universal themes of humanity and characters finding a way to bring satisfaction to their individual lives.

Reviewed by Beverly
APOOO BookClub
May 6, 2009