Kamila Shamsie’s new novel Home Fire, now longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, has already been hailed as one of her most important works to date. She recommends Booker-shortlisted Abdulrazak Gurnah who evokes the immigrant experience with unsentimental precision and profound insight, taking us from revolutionary 1960s Zanzibar to 1990s London, which is undergoing its own transformation. Living with his parents and his adored Uncle Amir in a house full of secrets, Salim is a bookish child, a dreamer haunted by night terrors. It is the 1970s and Zanzibar is changing. When glamorous

Uncle Amir, now a senior diplomat, offers Salim an escape, the lonely teenager travels to London for college. But nothing has prepared him for the biting cold and seething crowds of a hostile city. Struggling to find a foothold and to understand the darkness at the heart of his family, Salim must face truths about himself and those closest to him — and about love, sex and power. ©Alexi 2017

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, September 1st, 2017