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Home Fire book cover
Literary Fiction · Tense

After Isma is stopped at Heathrow, she reaches Amherst, where she meets Eamonn Lone, the Home Secretary's son

Home Fire

by Kamila Shamsie

2017288 pagesModerate readFast pace
★ Women's Prize for Fiction, 2018

A modern retelling of Antigone about a family of British siblings and the Home Secretary's son

Isma Pasha, the eldest sibling, raised her younger twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz after their mother's death. The story begins with Isma detained by security at Heathrow Airport, so she misses her flight to Boston. She eventually reaches Amherst, Massachusetts, for graduate study and meets Eamonn Lone, the son of British Home Secretary Karamat Lone. The settings also include Istanbul, Raqqa and Karachi. The novel is a modern reimagining of Sophocles' Antigone.

More about this book

Who

Isma, Aneeka and Parvaiz Pasha, and Eamonn Lone.

World

London, Amherst, Istanbul, Raqqa and Karachi.

What makes it different

It is a modern version of Sophocles' Antigone, with an epigraph from Seamus Heaney's translation.

Feel

Fast and tense. It was longlisted for the 2017 Booker Prize.

See it on Amazon

Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition

Further reading

About the author

Kamila Shamsie1 book on Tori Books