“Burnt Shadows” by Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan)

Favourite Extract

She walked past the vegetable patches on the slopes a few days ago and saw the earth itself furrowing in mystification: why potatoes where once there were azaleas? What prompted this falling-off of love? How to explain to the earth that it was more functional as a vegetable patch than a flower garden, just as factories were more functional than schools, and boys were more functional as weapons than as humans.

Synopsis

August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost.

Nicola’s Creative Reading Group reading list

Year 7 – “Asia & the Pacific” (Oct 2013 – Jun 2014)

“The Patience Stone” by Atiq Rahimi (Afghanistan)
“Burnt Shadows” by Kamila Shamsie (Pakistan)
“Narcopolis” by Jeet Thayil (India)
“A Golden Age” by Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh)
“Reef” by Romesh Gunesekera (Sri Lanka)
“The Solemn Lantern Maker” by Merlinda Bobis (Philippines)
“The Secret River” by Kate Grenville (Australia)
“Once Were Warriors” by Alan Duff (New Zealand)
“Frangipani” by Célestine Hitiura Vaite (Tahiti)