Home Fire, a new novel by Kamila Shamsie ’94 has been named to the Man Booker Prize 2017 longlist, or “Man Booker Dozen.” The Man Booker Prize for Fiction is a prestigious British award, open to writers of any nationality, writing in English and published in the UK.
The publisher’s website notes: “A contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times.”
Reviewer Dwight Garner Calls Shamsie Book "ingenious and love-struck novel"
Shamsie was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan. She graduated from Hamilton in 1994 with a degree in creative writing and went on to earn her MFA from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Shamsie has returned to Hamilton to teach creative writing on several occasions.
She is the author of six other books: In the City by the Sea (1998), Kartography (2002), both of which were shortlisted for the United Kingdom’s John Llewelyn Rhys Award; Salt and Saffron (2000); Broken Verses, (2005); Burnt Shadows (2009); and A God in Every Stone (2014).
Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist.
This year’s Man Booker longlist was selected by a panel of five judges: literary critic and baroness Lola Young ); literary critic Lila Azam Zanganeh; Man Booker Prize shortlisted novelist Sarah Hall; artist Tom Phillips CBE RA; and travel writer Colin Thubron.
