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Kamila Shamsie (MFA'98) wins Britain's Women's Prize for Fiction
Friday, July 27, 2018
Friday, July 27, 2018
Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, which reworks Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone to tell the story of a British Muslim family’s connection to Islamic State, has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, acclaimed by judges as “the story of our times”. The annual award, which has been won by authors including Lionel Shriver, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Naomi Alderman in the last two decades, was previously known as the Orange prize and the Baileys prize.
The British Pakistani author’s seventh novel riffs on the ancient Greek play in which Antigone is forbidden to bury her brother Polynices after he is declared a traitor. The novel follows three orphaned siblings, elder sister Isma and twins Aneeka and Parvaiz, the latter of whom has left London to work for the media arm of Isis. When Eamonn, son of the British Muslim home secretary, enters their lives, Aneeka hopes to use him to save her missing brother. Read the Guardian's announcement of the award here.