{"id":5574,"date":"2018-02-19T09:27:43","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T09:27:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=5574"},"modified":"2018-06-06T16:19:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-06T16:19:09","slug":"home-fire-kamila-shamsie-bloomsbury-circus-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=5574","title":{"rendered":"Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie, Bloomsbury Circus, 2017"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Before I read this book I was familiar with the traditional story of Antigone.\u00a0 There is Sophocles\u2019s classic rendering of the tragedy, with Racine\u2019s version in French.\u00a0 The key protagonists are sisters Ismene and Antigone and their brother Polynices. He is the enemy of the state whose death challenges Antigone to defy the authorities so she can bury her brother, an act which in itself is proscribed by the state.<\/p>\n

In Kamila Shamsie\u2019s breathtaking, audacious retake, classical Greece is replaced by London\u2019s Wembley, home to immigrant Pakistani families, now with British citizenship. The two sisters are Isma and Aneeka, and Aneeka\u2019s twin brother is Parvaiz. Children of a jihadist father who died on the way to Guantanamo, they are known to the Secret Services, and aware of all their online activity being monitored and checked in case they follow in his footsteps.<\/p>\n

The two girls are absorbed in study and further education, but Parvaiz, directionless and watching from the sidelines as his sisters develop their independent lives, becomes a classic recruit for Islamist extremists. He is persuaded to leave the UK for Syria; when his elder sister Isma learns of this she informs the Home Office, so as to protect Aneeka and herself, but in doing so causes an irreconcilable rift between them.<\/p>\n

In parallel with the family\u2019s unfolding drama, another British Asian family is drawn into the story.\u00a0 Karamat Lone is the atheist Home Secretary with an uncompromising policy towards dual-nationality jihadists; those who leave the UK to fight with terrorists are stripped of their UK citizenship.\u00a0 Aneeka starts an affair with his son Eamonn in the hope that he will be able to act as leverage with Karamat for Parvaiz to return to the UK.\u00a0 Parvaiz realises his mistake as soon as he arrives in Raqqa, but his path home seems impossible in the present climate.<\/p>\n

What happens to Parvaiz in his attempt to escape from the horror\u00a0 of the terrorists\u2019 actions is inevitable, but it is here that Aneeka takes up the mantle of Antigone. All she wants is to bring her brother\u2019s body back to the UK for burial.\u00a0 For the Home Secretary, this is a red line and no longer allowed by law, so in a blaze of publicity and social media, Aneeka takes the struggle with her to Pakistan. If she cannot bring Parvaiz back, then she will go to him in the most public way imaginable. Eamonn and his father are then forced to make their own desperate decisions.<\/p>\n

Home Fire<\/em> is an extraordinary novel. It is bang up to the moment, managing to express love, fear, bravery, compassion, all without either demonising or glorifying the central characters. The images in the last section of the book are vivid and terrifying. Shamsie\u2019s writing penetrates deep into the human condition, exploring both rational and irrational behaviour. \u00a0It shows what can happen in a society where loyalties are divided, and offers no easy solutions, or judgements on behaviour.
\n<\/del><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the conflicts that can arise in a society where loyalties are divided b-o-o-k r-e-v-i-e-w<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":5573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,68,55,65],"tags":[76,106,97,35],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5574"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5587,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5574\/revisions\/5587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}