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Burnt Shadows - Kamila Shamsie
Burnt Shadows
by: (author)
Sweeping in scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, "Burnt Shadows" is an epic narrative of disasters elided and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed. August 9, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of... show more
Sweeping in scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, "Burnt Shadows" is an epic narrative of disasters elided and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.
August 9, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss.

In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realization. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost.

In search of new beginnings, Hiroko travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee, Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history — personal, political — are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs, and Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.  

źródło opisu: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2009
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Format: papier
ISBN: 9781408800874
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Pages no: 384
Edition language: English
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
artsy musings of a bibliophile
artsy musings of a bibliophile rated it
4.0 Burnt Shadows: A Novel
The journey from Hiroko Tanaka to an almost Hiroko Konrad and finally, Hiroko Ashraf was intensely poetic and linked to the many absurdities of life. Everything written in the book can be reflected in one simple phrase, "The speed necessary to replace loss." More than a search for identity, Burnt Sh...
MargaretBolingMullin
MargaretBolingMullin rated it
0.0 Burnt Shadows
5/2/11 ** I've now officially dropped this book; I was enjoying it while I was reading it, but when I got side-tracked into something else, this didn't call me back. I keep trying to read literary novels and they just don't appeal. :(3/23/11 ** Several months ago BBC's program, The Strand, featured...
Chrissie's Books
Chrissie's Books rated it
3.0
NO SPOILERSI finished this last night. Three or four stars? Do I REALLY like it or do I like it. While I was reading it, I REALLY liked it, but with time it is the story that will remain not all the wonderful lines that are so intriguing. I think it will turn into an "I liked it" book. You will thor...
carey
carey rated it
Too ambitious, too wordy, just got through it.
Par Lance
Par Lance rated it
Based on friends' reviews and comments from other Goodreads members, I have decided to spare myself the trouble.
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