Burnt Shadows: A Novel
by Kamila Shamsie | Literature & Fiction | This book has not been rated.
ISBN: 0312551878 Global Overview for this book
ISBN: 0312551878 Global Overview for this book
2 journalers for this copy...
By the author of Kartography, which I really enjoyed. This book has a great texture, very thick pages and rough cut edges.
A sweeping look of the best and worst of human actions. Starting in Nagasaki with a woman in love with her new husband, ending in 2002 with a man sent to Guantanamo Bay, with the story line of the division of India and Pakistan in between.
A sweeping look of the best and worst of human actions. Starting in Nagasaki with a woman in love with her new husband, ending in 2002 with a man sent to Guantanamo Bay, with the story line of the division of India and Pakistan in between.
I read so much, and so quickly, that it takes a rare exception of a book to send me searching for post-it notes and a pen to write down quotes from the writing. I found the writing in this book so compelling, that I stopped reading everything else for two whole days and just immersed myself in the story of a woman who finds herself in the midst of several acts of war in the lifetime. From Nagasaki where she is scared mentally and physically, to Delhi where she runs with her new husband from the violence that surrounds the retreat of England, to the rise of the Taliban in Pakistan where she almost looses her son, to her retirement in New York city in 2001, where she lives with a dear old friend. There is so much that happens in this book, I really can't even begin to summarize the plot further than that.
"Two years after the war, they could accept an ally of Hitler sooner than they could accept someone of a different class."
Although all those circumstances may seem contrived to put together in one book, this book was so believable, that we kept catching ourselves at my bookclub talking about the characters as if they were people we knew. But in some ways they are. We are all expats living in Asia, most of us have lived in several countries, and most of us had had cross-cultural relationships. Although we haven't directly lived in the path of war, this book is us.
"We were just young and foolish, what did we know about each other? Almost nothing. It was luck, pure luck, that we discovered after marriage that our natures were so sympathetic to each other."
I don't know if a truer statement has been written about the vibe of an Asian city, "...world's urban tribes as they enter unfamiliar landscapes of chaos and possibility.. cars using their horns in a complicated and unrelenting exchange about power, intention, and mis-trust."
"Two years after the war, they could accept an ally of Hitler sooner than they could accept someone of a different class."
Although all those circumstances may seem contrived to put together in one book, this book was so believable, that we kept catching ourselves at my bookclub talking about the characters as if they were people we knew. But in some ways they are. We are all expats living in Asia, most of us have lived in several countries, and most of us had had cross-cultural relationships. Although we haven't directly lived in the path of war, this book is us.
"We were just young and foolish, what did we know about each other? Almost nothing. It was luck, pure luck, that we discovered after marriage that our natures were so sympathetic to each other."
I don't know if a truer statement has been written about the vibe of an Asian city, "...world's urban tribes as they enter unfamiliar landscapes of chaos and possibility.. cars using their horns in a complicated and unrelenting exchange about power, intention, and mis-trust."
Journal Entry 3 by zzz from Rakovica / Раковица, City of Belgrade Serbia on Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Thank you SO much for this one!!!
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