Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What is a tragedy in literature? What are its main characteristics?

Teaching Suggestion: Home Fire is an adaptation of the tragic play Antigone, modeling much of the format and structure of its five acts. Consider helping students understand the genre of tragedy so they will be better able to identify its conventions in the novel by accessing or sharing these or similar resources:

• “Antigone in Pakistan: Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie” is an academic article by Peter Krause from the Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics analyzing Shamsie’s adaptation of the Greek play.
• This resource explores the tragic structure dating back to ancient Greece.
• This brief overview presents the history of tragedy and includes some interesting etymological insights to its origins, characteristics, and terminology.

2. Let’s think about context. In the United States, life changed in many ways after 9/11. How do you think this might have been similar or different in the United Kingdom?

Teaching Suggestion: Students may not realize that 9/11’s effects echoed across countries around the world, and so this question provides an opportunity to introduce the tragedy’s global effects.