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

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