Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie

In the last decade, Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie has produced a body of work set largely in Karachi, but which also explores modern global politics. In her novels and essays, Shamsie's work has explored the country's tumultuous origins and its place in the international nexus emerging since 9/11 and the ‘war on terror'. Her first novel, In the City by the Sea, quietly anatomises the consequences of dictatorship through the eyes of a young Pakistani boy. In Kartography, the literal charting of "vibrant, violent" modern Karachi is the backdrop for an exploration of complex personal relationships and ethnic allegiances during the 1971 war with Bangladesh. Shamsie's most recent novel, Burnt Shadows, is an epic narrative relating the experiences of one woman relentlessly buffeted by history. Moving across decades and continents, it takes a look at the human costs of imperial power. Shamsie's work has garnered a number of prizes; in 2009 Burnt Shadows was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Join her in conversation with John Campbell. (dakvid)… (mere)

Kamila Shamsie; Ilija Trojanow

Kamila Shamsie and Ilija Trojanow are travellers who have written novels in which characters find themselves in crucial historical moments. Both are interested in revealing the many voices of colonialism. Trojanow's The Collector of Worlds is a fictional account of the great English explorer Sir Richard Burton's travels in India, Mecca, and to Africa. Shamsie's Burnt Shadows follows a Japanese woman's life from the dropping of the bomb at Nagasaki, to India on the eve of partition, to Karachi, through to New York City and the aftermath of 9/11. Shamsie and Trojanow's characters move between cultures and identities, continents and eras; and like Burton they collect worlds. Both writers are curious about history's marginal voices - the servants who accompanied Burton, and the wife of an Indian Muslim banished to Pakistan. Join these writers in conversation with John Newton about history, colonialism past and present, and what it means to be a global citizen. (dakvid)… (mere)

Neil Cross; Kamila Shamsie; Chloe Hooper; Gil Adamson; Audrey Niffenegger

New Zealand Post Writers and Readers Week begins with the fine art of fiction. Join four of literature's most fascinating voices as they talk about craft, character, style and genre. The glittering line-up brings together: novelist and Spooks scriptwriter Neil Cross - author of Burial and Natural History, celebrated Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie - author of Burnt Shadows and Broken Verses, novelist turned reporter Chloe Hooper - author of the award-winning The Tall Man and A Child's Book of True Crime, and Gil Adamson - author of epic adventure The Outlander. Join them for a night of reverie and revelation, and get a sneak preview of the fabulous week to come. (dakvid)… (mere)

Kamila Shamsie læser fra Brændte skygger.

Date/Time: Thursday, May 7, 7:00 p.m. Event: Kamila Shamsie will read from and sign her new novel, Burnt Shadows. 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. “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…”— Salman Rushdie (OdysseyBookshop)… (mere)