Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

#AdventCalendar Day 22 #Orphans and #CareExperience in fiction: #HomeFire by Kamila Shamsie

Home Fire (2018), retells the Greek myth, Antigone (441BC), by Sophocles as the story of two British-Pakistani families. A tragedy about radicalisation in modern London. Orphans, Isma (Ismene), and Aneeka (Antigone) live in Wembley with the stigma their father’s jihadi past that culminates in their brother Parvaiz (Polyneices), joining Isis in Syria.

Isma accepts an invitation from a mentor in America after years of being both mum and sister to her sibling twins, which allows her to resume a PhD 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.

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 power and love?

The novel asks provoking questions about British politics and today’s society and illustrates how love and loyalty can become mixed up and flawed. It also is a good example of how those with split and interrupted childhoods, whose need for acceptance and belonging – high on the list of dispossessed attributes – could choose a road less travelled.

 

Home Fire is published by Bloomsbury

Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018