Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie

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 contemporary reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone, Home Fire is an urgent, fiercely compelling story of loyalties torn apart when love and politics collide – confirming Kamila Shamsie as a master storyteller of our times.

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Despite it having won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018, Home Fire is a novel that has, until recently, passed me by.  Quite how I’ve missed it, I’m not sure, but it’s a novel that I absolutely adored and while it’s my first by Kamila Shamsie, it certainly won’t be my last, not least because I have a copy of her latest novel, Best of Friends, sat on my shelf!

Home Fire is a retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone, transported out of ancient Greece and into present day London. I’ll be honest, Antigone is not a play that I’m massively familiar with, although I read The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes a few years ago (Antigone is one of those children) but could only remember the barest bones of what happens.  I found that this didn’t matter at all while reading Home Fire, and so don’t be put off if you’re not familiar with Sophocles’ tragedy as it’s a novel that can be enjoyed without any prior knowledge.  Once I finished reading, I did read a synopsis of Antigone, and so came to appreciate just how clever Shamsie’s adaptation is after reading, but it works as a standalone novel in its own right. 

Home Fire introduces the reader to the Pashas – a family of British Muslims living in London.  They haven’t had the easiest of starts in life, and Isma had to abandon her graduate studies to look after her younger siblings, twins Aneeka and Parvaiz, following the death of their mother, their father having long since disappeared and believed to be dead although the circumstances aren’t entirely clear and based upon rumour as much as fact.  Now that the twins are 19, Isma can pursue the PhD she had previously put to one side and at the outset of the novel is travelling to America to take up a place with her former tutor.  She still feels a huge amount of responsibility towards her younger siblings, and particularly Aneeka with whom she is particularly close.  It soon becomes clear that their brother, Parvaiz, has become a source of contention between them, although the reasons for that aren’t immediately revealed. 

Despite being from a single family, these three characters are incredibly different to each other.  Isma is the sensible one, a role that I think she’s had to take on while looking after her two younger siblings.  I perhaps found her to be a little too compliant and eager to please at times, although I came to appreciate that she does so to make her life – and the lives of her siblings – easier than they might be otherwise.  Aneeka is quite a contrast to her older sister.  Bold and opinionated, she feels no qualms in speaking out and is happy to make a stand for her beliefs, whatever the consequences.  I felt that I knew Parvaiz the least of the three.  A young man who hasn’t achieved quite the same academic success as his sisters, there’s a sense that he doesn’t quite know what he wants to do with himself, something that makes the events of the novel more understandable.

Home Fire is a relatively brief novel that is split into five sections, each told from a different perspective, including Isma, Aneeka, and Parvaiz.  While there’s nothing new in this, I found it to particularly effective in this novel, delivering a linear narrative but putting a different spin on events and showing a different side to the characters that the reader has already got to know.  From the beginning, I was gripped by these characters and their respective lives, and I loved seeing how the different elements of the story came together.

While it is a relatively brief novel, it’s one that manages to touch upon many important themes and issues.  The Pashas are British Muslims living in London and Shamsie – a master of show, don’t tell – highlights their daily experiences and the prejudice they face.  For Isma, her journey to America starts badly with an interrogation at the airport which makes her miss her flight, something that she anticipated and prepared for, but is still invasive and scary despite her preparations and determination to take it in her stride. 

Shamsie also explores how (typically) young men may be selected and recruited into extremist organisations.  The grooming is subtle at the time, playing upon the individual’s fears, insecurities, and any prejudice they’ve been subjected to.  While each case will of course be different, the portrayal here is both believable and shocking in its simplicity.  There’s also the difficulty of getting out once a part of such a group, with few avenues through which to seek help available.  While some will join such groups and factions willingly, others are groomed into such roles, and Shamsie highlights this brilliantly in this novel.

The lives of the Pashas become entangled, in more ways than one, with those of MP and Home Secretary, Karamat Lone, and his son, Eamonn.  Karamat in particular gives a different view of British Muslims as someone who has achieved a high government position against the odds.  Karamat falls on the side of conforming to British dress codes and way of life, believing this to be the best route to acceptance and integration, and this attitude contrasts with the Pasha’s view of retaining their own values.  I like the way that these two alternative viewpoints are explored with no judgement or sense of a right versus wrong approach as Shamsie remains neutral.   

Home Fire is a novel that I thoroughly enjoyed and it’s one that I found to be hard-hitting and thought-provoking despite its brevity.  Highly recommended.