BURNT SHADOWS
Kamila Shamsie
Picador
Fiction
ISBN: 9780312551872
This engrossing novel of the intersections and intertwining of two quite different families begins on the morning of August 9, 1945, the day Nagasaki will be bombed. Konrad Weiss is a German who has been sent away from the Delhi home of his British brother-in-law and sister, James and Ilse (now called Elizabeth) Burton. He has made his own home in Nagasaki for seven years, living in the abandoned house of a distant relative. On this day, like every day, he is thinking of Hiroko Tanaka, who began as his translator but later became the love of his life.
When the air-raid siren goes off, Hiroko and Konrad spend time in separate shelters. Konrad's is empty until a man named Yoshi Watanabe enters. Yoshi was once Konrad's friend, but when Germany surrendered and Konrad became a suspicious character, everyone but Hiroko quit speaking to him. Today, though, he tells her about the bombing of Hiroshima three days before. Konrad, positive that the factory Hiroko works in will be bombed, doesn't wait for the "all clear." Instead, he runs to find her, finally locating her on the porch of her house.
Hiroko's father is away from the house, so she invites Konrad in. He proposes to her and she accepts. When they embrace, Hiroko believes she has found true peace. Their kiss is intense, and Hiroko invites him to stay to explore further intimacy, but Konrad resists. As he leaves, they trade promises of their future life together. Hiroko, overcome, rushes to her room and slips into a silk kimono imprinted with three black cranes flying across the back. She steps out onto the veranda, not knowing that he is thinking her name…and at that moment, their world is obliterated.
Hiroko visits Elizabeth and James Burton in Delhi in 1947. She had heard so much about Konrad's sister and brother-in-law from Konrad that it seems inevitably right to travel to see them when she has the opportunity to leave Japan, where she can no longer bear to live. Hiroko is marked by the bomb that destroyed her world in many obvious and more subtle ways; she even bears black crane-shaped scars across her back.
Elizabeth insists that Hiroko stay with them, despite her husband's initial misgivings about the stranger. Hiroko is sensitive to the strained relations between James and Elizabeth, which appears to have worsened when James insisted their son be sent away from India to boarding school in England. At the Burton home, Hiroko also meets Sajjad Ali Ashraf, a young man originally introduced to James by Konrad. Sajjad is supposedly learning how to become a lawyer (and in reality does read James's law books on his own time). Mostly, though, he is a companion of sorts to James, playing endless games of chess with him. Hiroko finds that she can speak to Sajjad about her deepest emotions and most guarded secrets.
Hiroko, the Burtons and Sajjad have no way to imagine how intertwined their families will grow. Their lives, along with those of their loved ones, play out across India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and finally into New York in 2002. Their story gives readers the chance to discover a wealth of experiences far from most of our own lives. Yet we remain in tune with each character, and so involved that we can barely put the book down.
BURNT SHADOWS is not just another riveting page-turner; it is unique, unforgettable and gorgeously written. The plot, which is both uplifting and devastating, has impact. This complex examination of human nature is powerful enough to make us question our own assumptions and worldview.
--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)
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