Burnt Shadows, first published in 2009, is the fifth novel by Pakistani-British author Kamila Shamsie. A political-historical novel, it was nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction, one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, and won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, which celebrates books that contribute to a greater understanding of racism and diversity. Shamsie has been shortlisted several times for a John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; she also received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999, and her seventh novel, Home Fire (2017), was shortlisted for the renowned Booker Prize and won the Women’s Prize for Fiction. 

Burnt Shadows follows two families, the Pakistani-Japanese Tanaka-Ashrafs and the German-English-American Weiss-Burtons, as they intersect across generations and world historical events. Unfolding in a present-tense, third-person omniscient narration, Burnt Shadows explores the motivations of each of its main characters to reveal the complicated overlap of the personal and the political, using expressive prose and frequent symbolism to center the emotional stakes of the events it represents.

Plot Summary

In the Prologue, an unnamed prisoner waits alone in a cell at Guantanamo Bay.

Part 1 then opens on August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan, with Hiroko Tanaka, a former schoolteacher turned factory worker, and her lover, an idealistic German expatriate named Konrad Weiss. Konrad seeks out Hiroko after hearing about the nuclear bomb dropped in Hiroshima and asks her to marry him. Hiroko accepts. Just after Konrad leaves, Nagasaki is bombed. The nuclear explosion burns the birds on Hiroko’s kimono into her back, permanently scarring her. Afterwards, all that Hiroko can find of Konrad is his shadow, the result of body fat burned into stone due to radiation.

Part 2 begins two years later when Hiroko travels to the Delhi, India home of Konrad’s half-sister Ilse, who uses the name Elizabeth to hide her German ancestry, and who strikes up an immediate friendship with Hiroko. Elizabeth is unhappily married to James Burton. James’s clerk, Sajjad Ali Ashraf, agrees to teach Urdu to Hiroko, and a romance develops between them. The Burtons disapprove of the relationship because Sajjad is Muslim and poor, and Elizabeth misinterprets an intimate moment in which Hiroko shows Sajjad her burn scars as assault. Hiroko is able to correct the error, but Sajjad is fired. After his mother dies, Sajjad proposes marriage to Hiroko, who accepts. Meanwhile, Elizabeth decides to leave James and go live in New York City as Ilse Weiss. James suggests that Sajjad and Hiroko leave the country to avoid political violence, and so they travel to Istanbul. However, because Sajjad leaves India during Partition, his Indian citizenship is revoked, and so Hiroko and Sajjad go to Karachi, Pakistan as refugees. 

Part 3 takes place 15 years later in Karachi in 1982 at the height of the Cold War. Hiroko and Sajjad’s teenage son, Raza, struggles to fit in as a half-Japanese Pakistani boy. Harry Burton, James and Ilse’s son, works for the CIA, arming Islamic extremist fighters to support the US proxy war in Afghanistan against the USSR. Harry reconnects with the Tanaka-Ashrafs while on assignment in Pakistan. Raza meets Abdullah, a young Afghan refugee, and assumes the Afghan alias “Raza Hazara.” Wanting one last adventure before college, Raza convinces Abdullah to join the Islamic guerilla forces and promises to go with him, planning to desert and let Abdullah think that “Raza Hazara” simply vanished. Once at the camp, Raza realizes he is in danger but is saved by the Commander, who knows Raza is a friend of CIA operative Harry Burton. Raza arrives home to find that Sajjad was murdered while looking for him.

Part 4 opens in 2001, three months after the September 11 attacks. Hiroko lives with Ilse and Kim Burton, Harry’s daughter, in New York City. Harry and Raza work for a private military company, contracted by the United States to search for Al-Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan. Raza searches for Abdullah and learns that he is an undocumented taxi driver in New York. Abdullah, fearful of being profiled, wants to leave the United States, so Raza asks Kim to help, but she refuses. Harry is killed, and the CIA assumes Raza is responsible due to his teenage encounter with Islamic extremists. Raza, now a fugitive, travels to Canada hoping to see Hiroko. Hiroko convinces Kim to drive Abdullah across the border to Canada, but Kim argues with Abdullah about Islam on the way. Kim drops off Abdullah at a fast-food restaurant as planned, then reports Abdullah to the Canadian police. Raza, also at the restaurant, covers for Abdullah, who escapes. When Kim tries to tell the police that they have the wrong man, Raza stops her, allowing himself to be arrested. Kim returns to New York to find a furious Hiroko, who compares Kim to the Americans who justified the use of nuclear bombs in Japan. Kim calls the Canadian police to exonerate Raza but discovers that he has been handed over to the United States. Raza is implied to be the prisoner at Guantanamo Bay from the Prologue.