Burnt Shadows

This is the novel I wanted to win the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction; if this is less deserving and overshadowed by Marilynne Robinson's Home then my imagination cannot extend to how good that novel must be.

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie is profound yet understated. It is poetic in parts and philisophical in others. It is impressive in scope - from Guantanamo Bay back to Nagasaki on the afternoon of the A-bomb, to Delhi pre Indian independence, to Pakistan post-independence, to New York and Afghanistan post 9/11 - but with concentrated attention to detail.

As mentioned in a previous post, one of the most striking parts of the novel is an editorial choice: the flashing white light when Fat Man fell on the afternoon of August 9th, 1945, is represented upon the page and is extremely effective. On each page of the book too -and on the front cover- are the three black cranes that are a central motif of the novel. Hiroko, the main protagonist, is wearing her dead mother's kimono with a pattern of cranes embroidered on its back when the Atomic bomb falls and this design is burned onto her back. Shamsie revealed in interview that she was inspired by this line from John Hersey's book Hiroshima: "On some undressed bodies the burns had made patterns - of undershirt straps and suspenders and, on the skin of some women (since white repelled the heat from the bomb and dark clothes absorbed it and conducted it to the skin) the shape of flowers they had had on their kimonos" and the character of Hiroko was born. I have read that book (it is immensely evocative, as is Masuji Ibuse's Black Rain) and was struck by that line, that image that is burned upon the world's consciousness post-Atomic bomb. Photographs of survivors with these burns inspired Hersey, who in turn inspired Shamsie, and these photographs -along with other infamous and iconic ones of running victims and of the now named A-dome and Peace Memorial, the only building left standing- document one of the cataclysmic events of the Twentieth Century. The image of the three black cranes -and the scars upon Hiroko's back- are central to the novel and haunt her, subsequent events, and the reader. Although the Hiroshima section of Burnt Shadows is the shortest it is also the most effective; Hiroko is branded literally and figuratively, her resentment of being hibakusha ("explosion-affected people") and this is a resounding undercurrent throughout the novel.

I have enjoyed reading a number of novels set in pre and post Independence India, in Afghanistan, and in post 9/11 New York as well as Japanese literature and to blend all of these settings together so seamlessly and epically is astounding. Perhaps the sheer magnitude of its scope is unrealistic but, in my opinion, Burnt Shadows never seemed to grasp but always flowed from one historic event to the next.

This novel left an impact, a shadow, an imprint.