Home Fire

A pretty special reinterpretation of Antigone.

We begin in Massachusetts with Isma, in place of Ismene, a British PhD student from northern London who falls for a boy with Pakistani heritage and perfect British manners. His name is Eamon, to highlight his Irish heritage. Antigone readers will know something is wrong here. Ismene is Antigone's sister, and Heamon is Antigone's fiancé. There is no relationship between Ismene and Heamon. But what follows is a kind of beautiful set of chapters on Isma, Eamon and Isma's sister Aneeka (our Antigone).

(To lay out some plot essentials: Aneeka has a twin brother who join ISIS! Eamon's dad is an ambitious English politician who has managed his Pakistani heritage by becoming extra extra British. show more Eamon's mom is Irish. The plot pivots on this reputation-sensitive Pakistani British politician learning of the relationship between his son, Eamon, and a sibling of an Islamic terrorist.)

This is bold but successful relocation of mythical Thebes morality into contemporary British colonial legacy concerns of race, Islamophobia, terrorism. And a transformation of ancient Classical Greek theatric love to its contemporary meanings. The key elements of Antigone are here, and as is the dynamic of English colonial history. I found this take beautiful and, if a little predictable in certain elements, mostly fresh and thought-provoking.

2025
https://www.librarything.com/topic/375106#9035774 show less

A thought-provoking, readable, and intensely topical examination of radicalisation, identity, and divided loyalties, explored through five stylistically-distinct but narratively-related sections, each focusing on one Pakistani-heritage Brit and one location (London, Massachusetts, Istanbul, Syria, and Pakistan). It is excellent in its own right, but if you’re familiar with Sophocles’ Antigone, the parallels and differences add other rich dimensions.

Twins Aneeka and Parvaiz never knew their father (but know he’s not to be spoken of). They were orphaned at 12, and raised by their 21-year old sister, Isma, who put her own ambitions on hold. Seven years later, they’re all heading in different directions, geographically and show more philosophically. If you can overlook a very convenient coincidental meeting early on, the way their stories are revealed and developed, alongside those of Eamonn and Karamat, draw you into profound themes and tricky dilemmas, in a nuanced, empathetic, and engaging way.

Image: Multiculturalism word cloud including: traditions, inclusion, diversity, comfortable, growth, different, community, compassion, languages, gender, family, religion, perspective, and more. (Source)

Where do I belong?

“She thought how much more pleasurable life was when you lived among foreigners whose subtexts you couldn’t hear.”
As a middle-class white woman who has only ever lived in the UK, where I was born to a white Christian family, who’ve lived here for generations, it’s not an issue I’ve wrestled with very much.

For the characters in this book, the often opposing pulls of the culture and religion of their forebears versus the dominant one that surrounds them is a source of quotidian stress, compounded by shades of racism, whether it’s microaggressions, the dangers of “Googling while Muslim”, or complex legal issues with the Home Office or other state bodies.

I remember when multiculturalism was almost universally hailed as a positive. Karamat still promotes it:
“You are, we are British… Don’t set yourselves apart in the way you dress, the way you think, the outdated codes of behaviour you cling to… Because if you do, you will be treated differently - not because of racism, though that does still exist, but because you insist on your difference.”

But his assimilation erases his heritage - except when he visits relatives:
“Surrounded by his extended family… [he] disappeared into another language, with its own gestures and intonations, even when he was speaking English.”

The law - or The Law?

A character here says:
“Accept the law, even when it’s unjust.”
But famous social justice campaigners, including St Augustine and Martin Luther King, have said what seems to be the opposite:
“An unjust law is no law at all.”

It all depends on whose law: the state’s, God's, or your conscience? This is the core dilemma, arising from, and embedded in, all the other themes. When you’re pulled in two different directions, perhaps pain, sacrifice, and loss are inescapable, even if you have a degree of choice about the specifics.

Image: A pair of doors comprising two faces in profile, leading in and out, or, when closed, a single face head on. By Koketit. (Source)

Killing and terror

“Murder is always wrong.” Well, no: there are exceptions and grey areas, and although you and I might draw the line in slightly different places, it’s well-nigh impossible to defend an absolute prohibition. Even the law makes allowances for things like self-defence, accidental killing, and “diminished responsibility”.

“Terrorism is always wrong.” It feels more problematic to make exceptions for that, but without looking into the minds and motivations of those who resort to it, how can we hope to extinguish it? Watching sweet Parvaiz being slowly, meticulously groomed and radicalised was frighteningly plausible and inevitable:
“Parveiz went home that evening with the incandescence of a beautiful secret in his heart.”

Quotes

• “She felt, as she did most mornings, the deep pleasure of daily life distilled to the essentials: books, walks, spaces in which to think and work.”

• “With her law-student brain… [she] knew everything about her rights and nothing about the fragility of her place in the world.”

• “The hail and icicles continued their synthetic-edged symphony.”

• “She couldn’t tell if he was trying to impress her or if he was the kind of man in love with his own charm.”

• “For girls, becoming women was inevitability; for boys, becoming men was ambition.” [Made me think of Andrew Tate - ugh.]

• “A boy suddenly arrived into adolescence in a house where bills and grief filled all the crevices.”

• “In my days either you were the kind of girl who covered her head or you were the kind who wore make-up. Now everyone is everything at the same time.”

• “I get to choose which parts of me I want strangers to look at, and which are for you.”

• “The dead make their own demands, impossible to refuse.”

• “Grief manifested itself in ways that felt like anything but grief… grief was bad-tempered, grief was kind; grief saw nothing but itself, grief saw every speck of pain in the world; grief spread its wings large like an eagle, grief huddled small like a porcupine; grief needed company, grief craved solitude… Grief was a shapeshifter, and invisible too.”

• “Grief the amniotic fluid of their lives… Grief was the deal God struck with the Angel of Death, who wanted an unpassable river to separate the living from the dead… Grief was what you owed the dead for the necessary crime of living on without them.”

• “‘Pakistan?’ That final word spoken with all the disgust of a child of migrants who understands how much his parents gave up - family, context, language, familiarity - because the nation to which they first belonged had proven itself inadequate to the task of allowing them to live with dignity.”

See also

This was published in 2017, shortly after the Brexit referendum. That’s not mentioned, but it did raise the heat of public discourse about immigration and the visibility of divisive and often hateful rhetoric.

Several prominent politicians from immigrant families were, and are, vociferous in pushing for harsher and tighter restrictions and punishments for refugees:
• Kemi Badenoch
• Suella Braverman
• Sajid Javid
• Priti Patel

A Pakistani-heritage character in this novel says:
“You had to determine someone’s fitness for citizenship based on their actions, not accidents of birth.”
In 2015, British-born, 15-year old Shamima Begum and two friends were radicalised online and left the UK to join ISIS. In 2019, she was found in a Syrian refugee camp. The next day, the Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, removed her British Citizenship, leaving her stateless. She has nearly exhausted legal routes to challenge that decision. See HERE.

See the plot of Antigone HERE. show less

Isma, Aneeka, and Parvaiz have come of age without their parents. Their father was largely absent, and considered a terrorist by the British government. He reportedly died en route to Guantanamo. Isma was 19 when her mother died, and put her life on hold to raise the twins. Now Isma is 28, Aneeka & Parvaiz are 19, and Isma accepts an opportunity to resume her studies in the US. She meets Eamonn, son of the UK Home Secretary, and despite coffee dates her hopes of romance don’t materialize. It’s a different matter when Eamonn returns to England and meets Aneeka. Sparks fly, but Aneeka insists on keeping their relationship secret due to his father’s public anti-Muslim views. Meanwhile, Parvaiz has disappeared, and the sisters quickly show more learn he has been recruited for terrorist activity in Istanbul.

Each section of the novel is narrated by one of the principal characters, and the timing of each narrative overlaps somewhat. The reader experiences events from different perspectives, and can connect the details in each narrative into a story that is not fully visible to those involved. Tension mounts as Parvaiz’s activities unfold, and as Aneeka’s relationship with Eamonn inevitably sees the light of day. The novel delivers a climax that I absolutely didn’t see coming. Despite the horrifying content, the final pages are brilliantly written and cap off a stellar work. show less

Home Fire is a modernised retelling of the myth of Antigone, her brother Polynices and her lover Haemon.

Isma and her twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz have grown up in the absence of their father and mother. Isma has left Aneeka in London to go study in the USA, and Parvaiz has also left her to fight for ISIS. Isma meets the feckless Eamonn, the son of a Muslim politician who is now Home Secretary. Eamonn ignores her flirting but starts a relationship with the beautiful Aneeka on his return to London. Meanwhile rumours abound that Parvaiz is coming home, but can he do so safely given the implacable opposition of the Home Secretary to jihadis?

Shamsie has done a very good job of adapting this classic myth. She manages to convey the show more overwrought emotion of a Greek tragedy without making either the story or the characters ring false. In doing so she gets beyond the headline cliches of evil jihadists to expose the humanity beneath these radicalised young people. show less

Home Fire, Kamila Shamsie, author; Tania Rodrigues, narrator
When I turned the last page of the book I was struck dumb. I didn’t expect the ending, and I highly recommend that no one attempt to read the ending before they begin. Don’t peek, I implore you! The story plays out logically and clearly, and at the end, it will make the reader question his/her views on immigration, terrorism, Muslims, and also the government, with its regulations and its representatives with regard to all those issues. Most likely, the reader will bounce back and forth, for and against each idea as the story unfolds.
When it begins, the reader meets Isma Pasha, the caregiver of her twin siblings, Aneeka and Parvaiz; she is living in England. She is show more thoughtful and reserved, observes the ritual of prayer, though not five times a day, and wears a hijab, but is not extreme in her views. She is careful about how she expresses herself because of her father’s past. He was a known jihadist. When her twin siblings were orphaned, at age 12, she, almost 19, put her life on hold and stepped in to care for them. Now that they are 19, she would like to continue living her own life. When she is given the opportunity, by a former teacher, Dr. Hira Shah, to study at Amherst University, in Massachusetts, she grabs it. There she meets Eamonn, the son of the Home Secretary in England, Karamat Lone. She becomes enamored with Eamonn, but it is unrequited love because Eamonn considers himself like her brother. However, he does become interested in her sister after seeing her photo. Aneeka is beautiful.
When Isma made her decision to leave Wembley for America, it portended great changes for the twins, but they seemed to take the news well, with Parvaiz showing a bit more concern about it. He did not want to move out of his home to live with his Aunty Naseem. Feeling more abandoned than his sister, who can already taste the greater freedom she will have, his personality begins to change. He becomes more secretive and reticent. He meets and becomes completely entranced by Farook who becomes a father figure of sorts as he twists Parvaiz’s mind into thinking that he too should leave Wembley, but not for the purpose of study like his sister. When Farook tells him that men should be in charge of women, Parvaiz likes the idea. He believes his life is suddenly coming apart due to the actions of his sisters. He is an innocent who is unsuccessful academically, under employed and very naïve; when Farook lionizes Adil Pasha, Parvaiz’s father, for his jihadism, he is easily seduced. Farook convinces him to leave England for Syria and to join him in his fight for the Caliphate.
Aneeka wears a hijab and prays, is a free spirit and much more outgoing and modern than her quieter, modest sister. She seems quick to judge and is impulsive, expecting to get her way because of her beauty. When she learns that her sister has betrayed her brother, reporting him to the authorities, they become estranged. She becomes very involved with the same Eamonn her sister knew. Does she have an ulterior motive, or is it a true made in heaven romance? The twin’s relationship is very close, something I can completely understand. As a twin, I can relate to the special bond that exists, the special loyalty that embraces the siblings. Twins have a unique connection and the absence of one often makes the remaining one feel incomplete. I can identify with Aneeka’s unconditional devotion to Parvaiz.
At 19, Isma felt forced to make very different choices than her siblings did at the same age of 19, and as her mother did as a young woman when she married Adil Pasha who became a warrior for the Caliphate. Throughout the narrative, there is a thread about the travails of being “other” in a country. They are Asians of Pakistani origin; their skin color, religious practice and relationship to terrorism and terrorists affects their behavior everyday. They feel like outsiders. They have to be more careful than most, careful not to create suspicion by doing anything another would not even give a second thought. Their “Britishness” is questioned, as is their loyalty. Any relationship by anyone with a terrorist is scrutinized, recorded and monitored. Although the twins never knew their father, since he left their mother before they were born, the stigma of his terrorism follows them also, and leaves its mark on them, their relatives and their future prospects. It vaguely reminded me of what happens in Israel when generations are punished for the behavior of one miscreant. Families become collateral damage. Is that necessary or just?
The book highlights the cycle of mistrust and violence that exists in this age of terrorism, in this age of Islamic extremism. America is perhaps, among other things, hated for its tactics in fighting the radicals, for its black op sites, for Guantanamo; Britain is perhaps despised for its welcoming of them and then its attempt to control them. Pakistan seems to encourage them by doing nothing to mitigate the extremism and may actually seem to be allowing it to fester. In the book, the feeling imparted is that the jihadists feel rejected and abused by their host countries. None of them seems to feel any remorse or take responsibility for their own brutality. They are defiant, feel they are justified in their fight and feel outrage about the way they are treated when they are caught. Those that might repent have no way back, no way to escape the heinous battle they have joined.
The cruel examples of radical Muslim behavior, like their treatment of women, even leaving them to die because they are uncovered and must wait for women to come to their rescue, or the practice of crucifixion, beheading, torture, and rape, are varied and many. It is hard to know, sometimes, on which side to come down regarding one’s sympathy in each specific instance, but the viciousness of the followers of this strict Koranic interpretation cannot but help sway the reader’s judgment in one direction or another.
When the book begins, we witness the humiliation of Isma, because of her family history of terrorism, even though she is quite innocent. When it ends, we witness the result of the hard line responses to the problem of a hard line interpretation of a religious belief, and once again, we witness the suffering of those who are quite innocent because of a fear which is at times rational and at other times irrational, and that promotes tragic results. Two parents make choices which will follow them for generations. There was the Muslim family and the Christian family, the poor side of society and the wealthy side of society, the clash of cultures and beliefs that caused the apprehension, or perhaps panic, that may or may not have been justified at times; but the misunderstandings, by so many, l were pervasive all the time.
I enjoyed the audio but found that sometimes the narrator failed to delineate characters engaged in conversation. They sounded alike and it was difficult to determine who was speaking. Although this is a retelling of the Greek tragedy, the story of Antigone, by Sophocles, one does not have to know the classic to fully appreciate the novel.
There are many common threads and questions arising in the story that make for great discussion.
1-Aneeka easily seduces Eamonn, the son of the Home Secretary. One has to wonder about her reasons. Are they selfish, matters of the heart, or perhaps even vengeance because of Isma’s part in the trouble Parvaiz now faces.
2-Meanwhile, when Parvaiz is seduced by Farook, what is it that makes him such easy prey?
3-Adil Pasha, the jihad, fought to establish the Caliphate. He was a devout Muslim. Did his folly infect his family into the future? What about the Home Secretary’s actions? “Were the sins of the father visited upon the sons?”
4-The Home Secretary renounced his Moslem religion to fit in. He believed “outsiders” should make themselves less different in order to be successful. Why did he believe it was necessary to do this?
5--Should Isma have been so thoroughly demoralized, scrutinized and humiliated at the airport because of family history when she tried to travel to America? She had not committed any crime, and her behavior was always exemplary. Where should the line be drawn between suspect and innocent victim?
6-Did personal animus play a part in every decision each character made? Was their intellect sidelined by the influence of their past and their conflicting emotions?
7-Did continued stubborn adherence to rules without the ability to bend them when necessary bring about tragedy?
8-Each character made what they thought was a good choice, but it turned out otherwise. If we compare the choices of Isma, Aneeka, Parvaiz, Eamonn, Adil, and Karamat, are any of them appropriate and what makes them so?
9-If someone makes a terrible choice, as in jihadism, should there be no avenue for forgiveness when the error of that choice is recognized? Is there no hope for redemption, for forgiveness? Can that person ever be trusted again?
10-Was there one point in the narrative that foreshadowed the events or was the catalyst leading to all others? show less

This modern retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone features three British siblings of Pakistani descent variously haunted by the ghost of their jihadist father. Given the current political milieu, the novel can’t help but have a certain “ripped from the headlines” feel. But Shamsie’s plot is driven by far more ancient and enduring tragedies – the tragedy of children deprived of their parents, the tragedy of the death of a sibling, the tragedy of true love thwarted by families on opposite sides of an ancient feud, the tragedy of blind nationalism, the tragedy of sons desperate to live up to the ideals of their fathers, the tragedy of minority communities torn apart by internal dissent over their own complicity in the stereotypes show more they inspire.

Antigone is of course the obvious subtext, but what struck me were the parallels between the Muslim politician/minister in this tale and free negro abolitionists in pre-Civil War U.S., both struggling to resolve an impossible moral dilemma: is the “correct” path to assimilation through forceful insistence upon equal treatment, or is it through embracing law & order, even if it means abiding by laws that penalize one’s own race? The Pakistani-heritage British minister in this case chooses the later course, with predictably tragic consequences – predictable because, of course, Antigone is one of Sophocles’ great tragedies, so anyone going into this hoping for a “happily ever after” would have to be sadly naive.

Shamsie literally steps back and lets the characters tell their own tale, turning over each chapter to a different player in the tragedy who narrates their portion of the tale in first person. Which doesn’t mean Shamsie isn’t shaping the way we perceive the tale in more subtle ways: the language and setpieces she evokes are laden with connotation, from the opening chapter in which the eldest girl, Isma, debates whether emptying her suitcase in neat piles or dumping the clothes out haphazardly will seem less suspicious to the airport security personnel who are detaining her as she tries to enter the U.S. on a student visa, to the novel’s aching conclusion in which a grieving sister wailing over the body of her dead brother seems to summon up from the earth a howling dust storm.

I whizzed through this relatively short but powerful novel in less than a day, which I haven’t done in a long time; more than that, however, this is proving one of those books that inspires connections with real events and provokes different ways of perceiving familiar ideas. The fact that I find that surprising probably means that I’m the one that’s sadly naïve: whether the year is 441 BC or 2020 AD, it shouldn’t surprise me that tragedy is one literary theme that never ceased to haunt us. show less

This excellent new book is a retelling of Antigone set in the present day. The story revolves around two Pakistani families in London. Isma, the older sister of Aneeka and Parvaiz, raises her siblings after her mother dies suddenly. Their father had never been a part of their lives, having left the family as a jihadi. The sisters both encounter Eammon, whose father is a famous, rising politician who has taken a hard line on Pakistanis who do not fully integrate into British culture. When Parvaiz leaves his family to go to Syria, following in his father's footsteps, a crisis ensues.

I was hesitant to read this book because, honestly, I rarely enjoy reading fiction based around current, politically-charged events. It's too new and too show more emotional and too uncomfortable, and I generally read to escape current events. But Shamsie really does this well. I think that even though I was barely knowledgable about the Antigone story, it still really works to ground and focus the book. And she does a great job of presenting the moral complexities that all of the characters portray without beating the reader over the head with them or making the writing feel trite or obvious.

This is an excellent book and one I highly recommend. I'm interested in reading more of Shamsie's writing and glad to see she's written several other books already. show less