BURNT SHADOWS

In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfullywaiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? Hewonders August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto herveranda, 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, sheis twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In asplit second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with thesound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of abomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are thebird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she haslost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later.There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, herhusband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom shestarts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those leftbehind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But theshadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwinedworlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transportedfrom Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, toAfghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound themtogether over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, withunforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in itsevocation of time and place, "Burnt Shadows" is an epic narrative ofdisasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and lovesrewarded and betrayed.