My Review:
An emotional and timely novel, Home Fire is a compelling story about Muslim families in crisis. Isma is the responsible older sister of twins Aneeka and Parvaiz. Their mother and grandmother have passed away and the twins are now 18 years old, so Isma, having previously put her ambitions on the back burner to look after her siblings, is leaving her home in London to travel to America for a work opportunity. Aneeka is beautiful and intelligent and will be studying law in London, and Parvaiz vacates the country on a quest to learn about his father, a known jihadist, who fought in Chechnya and Afghanistan.
In the US, Isma meets Eamonn, the son of a British politician who has a Muslim background like she does, but values that appear to be very different. It seems like a spark is developing between them but then Eamonn returns to London and gets involved with younger sister, Aneeka. Parvaiz is unfocused and becomes radicalized by a friend who under false pretenses convinces him to go to Syria where he is told he will learn more about his estranged father but has really been recruited to a terrorist group. When he decides he doesn’t want to follow in his father’s footsteps but wants to return home to London, the law is not on his side and Aneeka is desperately hoping for help from Eamonn and his powerfully political father.
Government, loyalty to family and religious beliefs all come into play as author Kamila Shamsie skillfully writes about the Muslim immigrant struggle and the difficulties the innocent communities face due to extremists. I loved this book and believe it has great movie potential.
As Seen on Goodreads:
Home Fire is the suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences.
Isma is free. After years of watching out for her younger siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she’s accepted an invitation from a mentor in America that allows her to resume a dream long deferred. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream, to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. When he resurfaces half a globe away, Isma’s worst fears are confirmed.
Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Son of a powerful political figure, he has his own birthright to live up to—or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Suddenly, two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined, in this searing novel that asks: What sacrifices will we make in the name of love?
About the Author:
She has a BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College, and an MFA from the MFA Program for Poets & Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she was influenced by the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali.
Kamila wrote her first novel, In The City By The Sea, while she was still at UMass, and it was published in both India and England in 1998. It was soon shortlisted for the ‘John Llewelyn Rhys/Mail on Sunday award in the UK’, and she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her second novel, Salt and Saffron, followed up on her success, and was published in the United States, the United Kingdom, Pakistan and Italy. in 2000 she was selected as one of Orange’s 21 Writers of the 21st Century. Her third novel, Kartography, received widespread critical acclaim and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys award in the UK. Both “Kartography” and her most recent work, Broken Verses have won the Patras Bukhari Award from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan.
