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Burnt Shadows: A Novel

Burnt Shadows: A Novel
By Kamila Shamsie

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An Orange Prize Finalist

Beginning on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, and ending in a prison cell in the US in 2002, as a man is waiting to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of love and betrayal.

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York and, in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound these families together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.

Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi. She has studied and taught in the United States. Two of her previous novels, Kartography and Broken Verses, have won awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She writes for The Guardian (UK) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC.

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history—personal and political—are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the Ashrafs, and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York and, in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound these families together over decades and generations are tested by wars and disasters, with unforeseeable consequences.

"Shamsie stitches together a sweeping saga that begins with a young Japanese woman in wartime Nagasaki and ends, more than half a century later, with a Pakistani prisoner about to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The tale unfolds through the lives of two unusually multinational (and multilingual) families: the Weiss-Burtons (German, British and American) and the Ashraf-Tanakas (Indian/Pakistani and Japanese). Not counting minor detours, their triumphs and tragedies span five countries and, without giving too much away, at least three world-changing historical events. On the face of it, collapsing so broad a canvas in a relatively slender novel is a recipe for chaos worthy of a subcontinental urban planner. But in Ms. Shamsie's self-assured hands this does not come to pass. The story line remains taut, the characters vividly etched. Even the implausible romance at the heart of the novel—between Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and Sajjad Ashraf, a young aesthete forced to emigrate from Delhi to Karachi in the wake of the 1947 partition of British India—is somehow rendered believable. Ms. Shamsie is . . . as a cartographer of culture. She notes, for instance, that in Indo-Muslim society the emotional terrain of mourning is often communal rather than personal; Urdu contains no phrase for leaving a person alone with his grief. The siren call of modernity—with its implicit privileging of the nuclear family over the extended clan—can be deeply disturbing. As the matriarch of the undivided Ashraf family in pre-partition Delhi declares archly, 'maa-dern' is a word 'created only to cut you off from your people and your past.' Sajjad's failure to try sushi after 35 years with Hiroko tells you all you need to know about the persistence of inherited attitudes that span everything from the loyalty of taste buds to the mental geography of marriage. In the end, for all its insights into the cultural and familial, this is above all a political novel. The choice of a Japanese protagonist allows the author to question much of the received wisdom of what used to be called the War on Terror. As a young teacher in Nagasaki, Hiroko has known adolescent boys as eager to embrace the cult of martyrdom as any young mujahideen. In General Zia's concerted effort to drag Islam out of the home and into the public square, she sees the echo of Japanese emperor worship. The implication of these observations, of course, is that criticism of Islam is unwarranted. Not that long ago it was followers of Shintoism who were turning aircraft into missiles while dreaming of immortality . . . A cleverly constructed and powerfully imagined novel. Ultimately, as with any work of the imagination, the color of the politics matters much less than the quality of the prose."—Wall Street Journal Online, Asia edition

“Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world’s many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. Burnt Shadows is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response.”—Salman Rushdie

“Burnt Shadows is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author’s intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions.”—Anita Desai

“In this brilliant book Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through—pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through—the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beauty’s lair.”—Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

“Burnt Shadows is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that I’ve (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have traveled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come.”—Tahmima Anam, author of The Golden Age

"An epic tale of two families whose lives are intertwined by conflict.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #56573 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-04-27
  • Released on: 2009-04-28
  • Format: Deckle Edge
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 384 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by Carolyn See Burnt Shadows," by Kamila Shamsie, a Pakistani novelist who writes in English, comes to us from England, where it has recently been named a finalist for the Orange Prize. It's a historical novel with the very highest intentions, asking the question: How has the modern world gotten itself to the edge of nuclear annihilation? Shamsie's answer may or may not sound accurate, depending upon your own view. The world has been cursed, she suggests, since America dropped not one but two atomic bombs, first on Hiroshima, then -- gratuitously? -- on Nagasaki, in the summer of 1945. That unspeakably awful twin event has always been complicated by questions of race. America would never have done such a thing, some people have said, to the Germans; Caucasian lives would never have been submitted to such an experiment. Hiroko Tanaka is a young woman living in Nagasaki during that portentous summer. She is in love with Konrad Weiss, an idealistic German artist and scholar whose work attempts to discover how Eastern and Western civilizations might learn to live in harmony. Fate doesn't treat this young man very well; within the first few pages of the novel nothing is left of him but a scorched shadow etched on a large rock. At the time of the attack, Hiroko was wearing a kimono with black cranes on its back; she will carry the burned imprint of those birds for the rest of her life. Within a couple of years, Hiroko, who can no longer endure Japan or her position in it, journeys to New Delhi to visit Konrad's half sister, Ilse, who is married to James Burton, a slimy British attorney who has been living as one of the ruling elite as the Raj crumbles around him. His solace and comfort come from emotionally swindling an impossibly handsome and good-hearted young Muslim man, Sajjad Ashraf, who has been euchred into thinking he's somehow studying for the law when he's actually employed to play chess with Burton. (The author might not like to hear this, but Burton is a photocopy of Mr. Wilcox in "Howard's End," unscrupulous, bestially cunning. He lets the devil take the hindmost -- in this case, every person of a different color or belief than his own.) It doesn't give away the plot to say that -- against all odds and probabilities -- the bereft Hiroko and the pure-hearted Sajjad fall in love. The British, meanwhile, having extracted everything they could from India, make a hasty retreat. Partition ensues; Hiroko and Sajjad end up in Karachi. Their dreams have taken a beating, but they have each other. But this tale of oppression and emotional swindling, of running roughshod over people of other colors, is just beginning. The Burtons have a son, Henry, who moves to America and changes his name to Harry (read: Harry Truman, who made the decision to drop those bombs). The British empire turns American. Harry Burton becomes a member of the CIA and then a private mercenary. He manages to capture the trust and affection of young Raza, the mixed-race son of Hiroko and Sajjad. Raza possesses an uncanny gift for languages -- he and his mother speak Japanese, English, German and Urdu on a regular basis -- and although he has some trouble making a place for himself in Pakistan, he has only to cross the Afghan border to be thought of as a native tribesman, because of his almond eyes, his high cheekbones and his amazing command of the language. Soon Harry Burton and Raza are romping about in the mountains of Afghanistan, first stamping out the Soviets, then advancing American interests. After a tragedy, the beleaguered Hiroko moves to New York City to live with Ilse, who has divorced her awful husband. Hiroko is now in her 70s, Ilse in her 90s. The Burton dynasty has produced another reptilian creature: a daughter named Kim (just so we'll remember Kipling and his dreams of empire). This woman thoughtlessly commits a final, ghastly sin against Hiroko's family, based on race, self-interest and primitive stupidity. I could say that the first third of this novel is far more believable than the last two, or that the author stumbles when she attempts to create conversation between elderly women or Afghan tribesmen or American mercenaries. But the real problem is that "Burnt Shadows" is a novel of argument. Her argument is that the British and American empires, through their conscienceless colonialism (and particularly America's use of the bomb), are responsible for the very troubled world we live in today. After Kim Burton delivers the final coup de grace to Hiroko and her loved ones, Hiroko can only say, "You are the kindest, most generous woman I know. But right now, because of you, I understand for the first time how nations can applaud when their governments drop a second nuclear bomb." There's something quite wacky about that sentence. First, Kim Burton, outside of offering Hiroko a cup of hot chocolate, has been neither kind nor generous. Second, there aren't any "governments" that have dropped a second atomic bomb. There's only the United States. You can pick holes in this three-generational tale of white oppression, but you can't argue with deeply held beliefs. This is what a Pakistani novelist, Kamila Shamsie, believes. It's instructive to read this, on many levels.
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

From Booklist
Shamsie’s complex fifth novel, spanning the years between August 1945 and September 2001, is a story of two inextricably connected and politically impacted families. Berliner Konrad Weiss and Hiroko Tanaka, his translator, meet in Nagasaki and plan to marry. But after he is incinerated by the bomb and she is left permanently scarred, Hiroko journeys to Delhi, home of Konrad’s half-sister, Elizabeth Burton, and her British husband, James. Hiroko bonds with James’ assistant, Sajjad. With Partition between India and Pakistan looming, the Burtons return to England, where their son Henry is in boarding school. Hiroko and Sajjad marry, but they’re not allowed back into India, since Sajjad is a Muslim who “chose to leave.” Shamsie takes up their story 35 years later in Karachi, where they have one son, Raza, after bomb-related miscarriages. Henry appears, searching for his past, and offers to assist with Raza’s education; by 2001, they’re working together for the CIA in the U.S. Shamsie offers a moving look at the “complicated shared history” of these two families, an increasingly common facet of globalization. --Deborah Donovan

Review
“Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world’s many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. Burnt Shadows is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response.”
— Salman Rushdie

“Burnt Shadows is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author’s intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions.”
— Anita Desai

“In this brilliant book Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through — pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through — the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beauty’s lair.”
— Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

“Burnt Shadows is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that I’ve (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have traveled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come.”
— Tahmima Anam, author of The Golden Age, which was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Costa, and won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for First Book


From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews

"Then the world goes white."5


Shamsie's profound and troubling novel bridges the bombing of Nagasaki in 1945 to post-9/11 New York, when terrorism and distrust has defined a country's response to a terrible act. But the heart of the tale begins with language, with the sharing of one language with another, one culture with another. Out of this simple human connection comes a story of history, tragedy and loss. Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki, cannot find an answer to the question that haunts her: After Hiroshima, why a second bomb? Who makes such a decision? From that infamous day through 9/11, the acts of violence in the world are laid bare, countries in conflict, individuals searching for identity and meaning. Putting human faces on those who are affected, Shamsie draws a direct line between actions and actors, the intimate details of personal lives, the aspirations, beliefs and passions of individuals on a collision course with fate.

Surviving Nagasaki with the images of three birds burned into her back, Hiroko has lost the man she loves, Konrad Weiss, a German. Konrad's sister, Ilse, is married to an Englishman, James Burton. Two years later, when Hiroko travels to India to meet Konrad's family, she has no idea that her future will be intricately twined with the Burton's, or that she will meet her future husband, Sajjad Ashraf, in their home. While the Burton's personify England's imperialism and arrogance, Hiroko views life through a different prism, a woman who has lost everything, even her home. History shifts once again, the British departing India on the cusp of the Partition and the swath of violence than ensues. Living in Pakistan with Sajjad, Hiroko's family remains inextricably linked with the Burton's through circumstance, future generations experiencing the reverberations of those connections as they make critical life choices.

This novel opens a window into history, world events as significant as the characters; yet without these wonderfully nuanced characters it would be impossible to understand the ramifications of political evolution, the tangled web of nationalism and individual decisions, how a person can be absorbed, even twisted, by an idea. Bearing the scars of Nagasaki, Hiroko is history's witness, the eyes of humanity searching through the rubble of conflict, her family marked by her tragedy: "Hibakusha. It remained the most hated word in her vocabulary." Hiroko views her life, her grief, through the lens of that experience, a lifelong search for an answer. As time passes, the world grows smaller, from Japan and Nagasaki to India to Pakistan and New York, yet more complicated, more treacherous. Shamsie offers a compelling, disturbing reflection on a world that refuses to learn from the mistakes of the past, a heated response unleashed by fear, the human story writ large. Luan Gaines/2009.

A Necessary Read For A World That Humors Itself Civilized5
I was lucky enough to get an advanced copy of this book and once I started, found I couldn't be away from it for too long until it was over. Since the summary of the plot line is already in this product description, I won't waste time on that (and I don't want to give anything away). I was incredibly moved by how far out of a judgmental mindset the author took me. Through her realistic and brutally honest portrayals of the ripple affect human atrocities towards each other cause I was touched in a way no other book about racism, tolerance, and world peace has ever managed to accomplish. There is never a moment of judgement towards one side or another, there is only truth and cold hard historical facts being relayed through the voices of her characters. The only biases are those that would be contained within the points of views of the character speaking. By the last pages, I found tears in my eyes as I found myself searching for a happy ending and confronting the realization that the cold honesty of this book maintains itself to the last word. This is not a book that is intended to be pleasant, or leave you with a warm fuzzy feeling inside. This is a book to make you question what you think you know. This is a book that, for me, inspired a moment of reflection and a deep desire to educate future generations about the consequences even one person can have upon the world. I recommend this book to anyone who wishes to educate themselves and look beyond their comfort zone. It has earned a place of respect on my book shelf.

Living Beyond the Shadows5
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
May 6, 2009