#Kamila Shamsie

[timelesslords]

Antigone + siblings

Antigone - Sophocles (trans. Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald) // Homefire - Kamila Shamsie // "A Brother Named Gethsemane" - Natalie Diaz // Antigonick - Anne Carson // "Lay Me Down" - the Oh Hellos // Antigone - Jean Anouilh // "song of the insensible" - Andrew Kozma // Antigonick - Anne Carson

[bluebelly345]

"For girls, becoming women was inevitability; for boys, becoming men was ambition."

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

[quotelr]

All around us, Karachi kept moving

Kamila Shamsie, Kartography

[bettygemma]

In no order, here are my reading highlights for 2023

Best literary page turner (LPT)

This is a tie between 'I have some questions for you' by Rebecca Makkai and 'Birnam Wood' by Eleanor Catton. Both about moral quandaries of some sort, both really well written and extremely readable.

Best fantasy

'Babel' by R. F. Kuang. After I finished Babel I had to stare into the void for a little while to recover. One of the questions the book asks is, is it actually possible for those with power to be truly friends to those without power, and it answers pretty firmly in the negative. Which I remember being sad and sceptical about when I first read the book in August but now, on this side of the Voice to Parliament Referendum, it feels extremely prescient (*laughs bitterly*).

Best Australian fiction

'Love and Virtue' by Diana Reid. Also best campus novel of the year (I read lot of them in 2023 coincidentally!) I was devastated to end this book, not only because parts of this novel are set in my home town #representation but more importantly its genuinely brilliant and empathetic and recognisable. Also has multiple moral quandaries.

Best retelling

'Home Fire' by Kamila Shamsie which is a retelling of Antigone. I knew nothing about Antigone going in so found it super intense and surprising. Just like 'Love and Virtue ' I could have spent a hundred more pages with these characters.

Best Lenten read

'Passage' by Connie Willis. Willis is now probably my second favourite writer after Dorothy Sayers, and this book is up there as one of her greats, along with 'Doomsday Book' and 'To Say Nothing of the Dog'. A book to read to when death is near and you are in need of hope.

Best memoir

'Educated' by Tara Westover. Also wins the prize for being the book that made me the most thankful for my parents and for them sending me to a normal public school (honourable mention for this prize goes to 'I'm glad my mom died' by Jennette McCurdy').

Best feminist read

'Wifedom' by Anna Funder. Part biography of Eileen O'Shaughnessy, part novel, part memoir, this book is possibly the best investigation of the toll domestic inequality has on women I've read for a number of years. Read it if you're interested in biography and women's history and the literary canon. In one of the many passages that jumped out at me, after praising her husband for his modernity and equal mindedness, Funder writes:

"This was not enough to protect me. The patriarchy was too huge, and I was too small or stupid, or just not up for the fight. The individual man can be the loveliest, the system will still benefit him, without him having to lift a finger or a whip or change the sheets. This is the story I tell against myself. And against the system that made this self, as well as my husband's, and the system that put her into his service. Wifedom is a wicked magic trick we have learned to play on ourselves."

I mean??!?!

And finally, Book I recommended the most

'This is not a book about Benedict Cumberbatch' by Tabitha Carvon. I hyped this book to nearly every woman I know. Extremely funny if you were in Tumblr in 2012 or have ever participated in any fandom. A great companion read to 'Wifedom'. May it inspire you to find joy.

[writerly-ramblings]

Books Read in June:

1). Postcards from Surfers (Helen Garner)

2). Dedications (Iran Sanadzadeh)

3). The Lagoon and Other Stories (Janet Frame)

4). Every Day Is for the Thief (Teju Cole)

5). The Questions That Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom (Jane Smiley)

6). The Dutch House (Ann Patchett)

7). Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Patrick Süskind)

8). How Fiction Works (James Wood)

9). The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise (Pico Iyer)

10). Best of Friends (Kamila Shamsie)

11). Adventures in Pen Land: One Writer’s Journey from Inklings to Ink (Marianne Gingher)

12). Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim (David Sedaris)

[litandlifequotes]

Everything else you can live around, but not death. Death you have to live through.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

[thepainsofyearning]

"There is a phrase I have heard in English: to leave someone alone with their grief. Urdu has no equivalent phrase. It only understands the concept of gathering around and becoming 'ghum-khaur' —grief-eaters — who take in the mourner's sorrow. Would you like me to be in English or Urdu right now?”

Burnt shadows: Kamila Shamsie

Personally i would like somebody to ask me if they want to eat my sorrow.

[fallensapphires]

Holidays: Christmas Cocoa

The world won't get any more or less terrible if we stay indoors with a cup of hot chocolate ... although it's possible it will feel slightly less terrible if there are marshmallows in the hot chocolate.

[missglass]

2022, the year of great books

i had a fantastic reading year in 2022. these were some highlights in no particular order:

Susanna Clarke, Piranesi. What a peculiar little book. A man lives in a gigantic ruinous house - a kind of castle with grand halls and statues - where life is dominated by the tides of an ocean in the lower levels of the building. The protagonist is a kind man with almost child-like curiosity, he seems like a monk living with the utmost worship for this strange place. Like the house, the story unfolds like a labyrinth and as a reader you only slowly discover what exactly is going on. Best read in January by the sea.

Jonathan Franzen, Crossroads. I mean, yes, guys like Franzen rewrite the same kind of book again and again, but man, are they good at it. I'm a sucker for the same story told from multiple perspectives, and who doesn't love to think about God and a complicated relationship with faith through the eyes of one of the most pathetic protagonists I have read about in the past years, a housewife with the most unhinged backstory, and a bunch of unnecessarily dramatic children.

Kamila Shamsie, Home Fire. One of my absolute favourites. A retelling of Antigone set in modern Great Britain about three siblings - a set of twins and their older sister - whose father was a jihadist. I found the classic themes of Antigone - struggles with family, duty, sacrifice - really well updated to reflect more contemporary struggles with identity, faith, as well as political issues like immigration and the toll it can take to be pulled into two different directions: tradition/modernity, fitting in/staying connected to your roots, conforming/preserving some form of inherited cultural identity.

And yes, you obviously know how the story ends from the start, but the ending is still so heartwrenching. As we know from Fleabag, the greatest love stories are still between siblings ("the only person i'd run through an airport for is you" and such).

Ali Smith, Autumn and Summer. I have been a fan of Smith since reading "How to Be Both" and I am now three quarters through her beautiful Seasonal Quartet. I hardly know another author who writes about our contemporary times with such ease. i love how art is always present in her works and how her prose is playing sly tricks on the reader. she is sometimes so literal in her imagery that you can only think something is meant poetically or metaphorically, only to find out two sentences later how it was indeed meant literally.

Rachel Cusk, Transit and Kudos. One of my favourite discoveries of 2022. I loved reading about Faye's encounters and her conversations with friends and strangers alike. It reminds me a bit of Salinger's "Nine Stories" in the best way, enough love and squalor to please Esmé. Especially Transit was so full of great stories; Cusk really is able to capture that uncomfortable, liminal space in between two situations, to describe what it means to go through upheaval, to not know how something will turn out. To know something old - a relationship, a flat, a homecountry - was not the right fit, but not knowing at all that what will come will be any better.

Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait. "Hamnet" is a fictional account of Shakespeare's youngest (real) children - insightful, inutitive twins Hamnet and Judith - as well as of their mother, Agnes (the secret protagonist). O'Farrell's descriptions of grief and quiet domesticity are very lovely. The scenery is a bit mystic or unsettling at times, especially chapters about Agnes' life, and I found the novel generally beautifully written. (As the Guardian put's it: "read it and weep").

The Marriage Portrait takes place in Renaissance Florence and also features a very insightful, inutitive child, Lucretia de' Medici, the smart and rebellious daughter of the Duke of Florence. This story is about her arranged marriage at 15 to the Duke of Ferrara, and - as stated on the first page of the book - about the rumour that her husband killed her less than a year after their wedding.

I found the book quite suspenseful, but also very tender, poetic and loving. Also, I love books about artists and seeing through their eyes how they approach their art, which was a big part of TMP.

Honorable mentions:

Stine Pilgaard, Meter pro Sekunde - features my personal favourite, most fun protagonist of 2022.

Katja Oskamp, Marzahn Mon Amour - tales of a pedicurist/podiatrist and her clients.

[bloodmaarked]

➸ reading list

just added:

home fire, kamila shamsie

hits different, tasha ghouri + lizzie huxley-jones

someone who will love you in all your damaged glory, raphael bob-waksberg

how to solve your own murder, kristen perrin

the octopus man, jasper gibson

kim jiyoung, born 1982, cho nam-joo

brotherless night, v.v. ganeshananthan

gold rush, olivia petter

bittersweet, susan cain

beyond the door of no return, david diop

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Broken Verses | Author: Kamila Shamsie | Publisher: Mariner Books (2005)

[nextwavefutures]

‘The ones we love… are enemies of the state’

‘The ones we love… are enemies of the state’. New on Around The Edges: Kamila Shamsie’s book about love, identity, and race.

I originally picked up Kamila Shamsie’s 2017 novel Home Fire because I was intrigued by the idea of using Antigone as a way in to the modern politics of race, state, and identity. It took me a couple of goes to start it. The opening scene, in which Isma is interrogated by British border guards before she is allowed to fly to America, is important to the plot, it turns out, but was claustrophobic…

[wutherheen]

Best of Friends, Kamila Shamsie

[enlilwind]

Romanul este plin de evenimente cu tentă politică și ideologică, dezbătând subiecte precum felul în care sunt văzuți pakistanezii, fie și de a doua generație, de către societatea britanică sau americană, modul în care sunt tratate femeile și cum anumite familii sunt urmărite în deaproape de către organele de ordine.

[antonispetrides]

"Αίμα, δάκρυα κι ιδρώτας": Γιατί να μελετάμε τα αρχαία ελληνικά;

[Ομιλία προς τους μαθητές της Αγγλικής Σχολής Λευκωσίας, που εκφωνήθηκε στις 19 Ιανουαρίου 2023, στο πλαίσιο Ημερίδας Αρχαίων Ελληνικών, που διοργάνωσε το σχολείο. Ευχαριστώ τη φίλη και συνάδελφο Εύα Πολυβίου για την πρόσκληση] Το 2017, η πακιστανικής καταγωγής Βρετανίδα μυθιστοριογράφος Καμίλα Σάμσι δημοσίευσε το μυθιστόρημα Home Fire, που στα ελληνικά μεταφράστηκε μάλλον αδόκιμα ως Κρυφή…