Longlisted for the prestigiousOrange Prize for Fiction,Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadowsis an enthralling meta-cultural epic, the panoramic tale of two families tangled together in some of the most devastating conflicts of modern historyNagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her lover from the veranda as he leaves. Sunlight streams across Urakami Valley, and then the world goes white."Any reader anticipating a predictable yarn about the radicalisation of Islamist youth may feel cheated. Far more, I suspect, will feel challenged and enlightened, possibly provoked, and undoubtedly enriched."-Maya Jaggi, The GuardianIn the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan in search of new beginnings. From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow the entire world over. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events."Some novels are so intensely charged with emotion and beauty that the reader, emerging reluctantly from the last pages, feels flayed – as if a layer of skin has been delicately stripped off. Kamila Shamsie’s fifth book, Burnt Shadows, is one such rarity... Yet the merit of this formidable arching tale about loss and foreignness is entirely Shamsie's. Her achievement is tremendous."-Angel Gurria-Quintana, The Financial TimesKamila Shamsie'sBurnt Shadowsis a story for our time by "a writer of immense ambition and strength... This is an absorbing novel that commands in the reader a powerful emotional and intellectual response" (Salman Rushdie).Orange Prize Nominee for Fiction Shortlist (2009), Winner of Anisfield-Wolf Book Award (2010)