Burning Shadows

Author's name: Kamila Shamsi

"Burning Shadows" by Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie is her first novel to be translated into Arabic.
A wonderful novel... tremendous and humane... spanning more than half a century... from the end of World War II in 1945 until after the events of September 11, 2001... and spanning geographically from Nagasaki, Japan, through Delhi, India, Karachi, Pakistan, and the Afghan refugee camps on the Afghan-Pakistani border, concluding with New York, USA...
"Hiroko", the delicate Japanese girl who survived the horrific Nagasaki tragedy... with prominent burns on her thin back... and a completely crushed spirit under the weight of losing her German lover, Konrad Weiss... whose human shadows are found in his Indian Muslim counterpart, "Sajjad Ali Ashraf". The novel's greatness lies in its embodiment of the tragedy of the contemporary world following World War II... and the decline of the old colonial empires and the rise of new empires on the ruins of the great national, regional and nationalist units that disintegrated and were torn apart into smaller entities... India, Pakistan and Bangladesh... North and South Korea... etc. I loved "Hiroko" and sympathized with her and cried with pain and double grief for her... and I cried for Konrad Weiss and his eight flying notebooks... I admired Sajjad and his simplicity and his representation of the Indian (later Pakistani) spirit, which is close to the spirit of the Eastern societies in the Arab countries... A beautiful and wonderful novel with its superior humanity.