An evening with Man Booker Longlisted Kamila Shamsie

Ambitious and absorbing, Man Booker longlisted novel Home Fire is a breathtaking contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, and an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide.

Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death, she is finally studying in America, resuming 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. Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs. As the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. Is he to be a chance at love? The means of Parvaiz’s salvation? Two families’ fates are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

A powerful and intelligent story that feels so relevant for our times, Kamila Shamsie is without doubt one of the finest storytellers writing today.