Home Fire

Home Fire (2017) is the seventh novel by contemporary British writer Kamila Shamsie. The same year, Home Fire was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; in 2018, it won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. This study guide refers to the 2017 Riverhead Books Edition.

Other works by this author include Best of Friends, Burnt Shadows, and Broken Verses.

Plot Summary

Shamsie’s Home Fire is a 21st-century adaptation of Antigone, a 5th-century BC play by the Ancient Greek writer Sophocles. Shamsie reimagines the events of the tragedy as if they were unfolding among the British Muslims in modern-day London, exploring such themes as the intersection of birthplace and national identity, loyalty to the family versus loyalty to the state, and the crisis of masculinity and its consequences. Shamsie, herself an immigrant from Pakistan, wrote the novel only after she became a UK citizen as not to jeopardize her chances of being granted British citizenship.

Home Fire is told from five different perspectives of the key characters, which corresponds to the original Antigone’s five acts.