KARACHI: British-Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie has bagged the London Hellenic Prize 2017 and was awarded a cash prize of £10,000 for her seventh novel, Home Fire.

The prize, which is given to the best book inspired by or relating to Greece, celebrates “the cultural cross-fertilisation of the Greek and English-speaking worlds”.

Home Fire is a contemporary re-imagining of the Greek tragedy Antigone that follows three orphaned siblings, elder sister Isma and twins Aneeka and Parvaiz, as the latter leaves them to work for Isis.

“Upon conclusion of a heated debate in the gro­unds of New College, Ox­­ford, Kamila Shamsie was chosen as the winner of the 2017 Prize for her novel, Home Fire, published by Bloomsbury,” reads the Lon­don Hellenic Prize website.

Although the winner was announced on Oct 15, the official award ceremony took place on Tuesday night at the Centre for Hellenic Studies in King’s College London.

Home Fire has also won the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2018.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2018