Kamila Shamsie Books In Order
Publication Order of Standalone Novels
In the City by the Sea | (1998) | |
Salt and Saffron | (2000) | |
Kartography | (2001) | |
Broken Verses | (2005) | |
Burnt Shadows | (2009) | |
A God in Every Stone | (2014) | |
Home Fire | (2017) | |
Best of Friends | (2022) |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
The Lover’s Tale | (2018) |
Publication Order of Picture Books
Duckling: A Fairy Tale Revolution | (2020) |
Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books
Offence: The Muslim Case | (2009) |
Publication Order of Comma Singles Books
Fewer Things | (2011) |
The Cave | |
(2011) | |
The Skirt | (2012) |
Hitting Trees with Sticks | |
(2012) | |
Crosswords | (2013) |
A Wolf | |
(2013) | |
The Truth | (2013) |
Sports Leader | |
(2013) | |
Earthquakes | (2013) |
Tamagotchi | |
(2013) | |
The Truck to Berlin | (2013) |
The Virgin and the Soldier | |
(2013) | |
Red Enters the Eye | (2013) |
An Industrial Evolution | |
(2013) | |
The Cave | (2013) |
Mr Carlton | |
(2013) | |
A Paris Story | (2013) |
The Bicycle Express | |
(2013) | |
The Flight into Egypt | (2013) |
Abulafia | |
(2013) | |
Everything Is Moving, Everything Is Joined | (2013) |
The Pitch | |
(2013) | |
Morphogenesis | (2013) |
The Heart of Denis Noble | |
(2013) | |
What Kind of Dog | (2013) |
Crystal Night | |
(2013) | |
My Soul to Keep | (2017) |
Red Lights | |
(2017) | |
Many Years Ago, I Was Standing In A Meydan | (2017) |
The War of All Against All | |
(2017) | |
Easy on The Rose’s | (2017) |
The Pardon List | |
(2018) | |
The Mastiff | (2018) |
Heavy Clay Soil: A story from the Midlands Rising | |
(2018) | |
A Fiery Flag Unfurled in Coleman Street | (2018) |
Trying Lydia | |
(2018) | |
Banner Bright | (2018) |
Kick-Start: A story on the National Blind March | |
(2018) | |
For the Tape | (2018) |
There Are Five Ways Out Of This Room | |
(2018) | |
Spun | (2018) |
Rivers of Blood | |
(2018) | |
May Hobbs | (2018) |
The Stars are in the Sky | |
(2018) | |
Exterior Paint | (2018) |
The Beckhams are in Betty’s | |
(2018) | |
The Opposite of Drowning | (2018) |
Never Going Underground | |
(2018) | |
Conrad Street | (2018) |
The Turd Tree | |
(2018) | |
Expectant Management | (2018) |
Withen | |
(2018) | |
Bed 45 | (2018) |
The Poison Tree | |
(2018) | |
The Abandoned Person’s Tale | (2018) |
The Gardens of Babylon | |
(2018) |
Publication Order of Anthologies
The Pleasure of Reading | (1992) | |
Shoe Fly Baby | (2004) | |
Tell Tales | (2005) | |
And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women | (2005) | |
Lebanon, Lebanon | (2006) | |
Ox-Tales | (2009) | |
Road Stories | (2012) | |
A London Address | (2013) | |
Exquisite Corpse | (2013) | |
1914 – Goodbye to All That | (2014) | |
Freeman’s: Arrival | (2015) | |
Lunatics, Lovers and Poets | (2016) | |
The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories | (2017) | |
The Things I Would Tell You | (2017) | |
This is Not a Border: Reportage & Reflection from the Palestine Festival of Literature | (2017) | |
Refugee Tales | (2017) | |
Eight Ghosts | (2018) | |
Resist | (2019) | |
Furies | (2023) |
Kamila Shamsie is a bestselling author of mystery, literary fiction, horror, and general fiction. She published “In the City by the Sea,” her debut novel in 1998, and has been penning popular novels ever since.
In addition to at least eight single-standing novels, she is also the author of several short stories, novellas, picture books, and constitutions of short stories top several collections.
Shamsie was born and brought up in the Pakistani capital of Karachi. She would become very known when the 1998 novel “The City by the Sea” made the shortlist for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the United Kingdom.
In 2018, she won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel “Home Fire,” which also made the longlist for the 2017 Man Booker Prize just before it win the London Hellenic Prize.
Apart from winning many awards, her novels have been translated into more than two dozen languages.
Kamila Shamsie also happens to be a University of Manchester creative writing professor. She usually commutes from the suburbs in London to go work at her day job every day.
Her biggest break has to be the 2022 published novel “Best of Friends,” which was Book of the Year by the likes of the Financial Times, New Statesman, and the Guardian.
Shamsie was born to Muneeza Shamsie the literary author and critic and happens to be the niece of Atia Hosdain the celebrated Indian author and the granddaughter of Begum Jahanara Habidullah the memoirist.
When she was in her teenage years, Kamila Shamsie went to Hamilton College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing. She would later on go to the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she got her Master of Fine Art degree.
It was while she was studying in college for her master’s degree that she penned her debut novel “In The City By The Sea,” which was bought by the United Kingdom company Granta Books that published it in 1998.
Apart from her writing, she also works for the Guardian as a columnist and reviewer. She has also judged several literary awards including The First Book Award and The New Writing Orange Award by The Guardian.
She also sits on the Index on Censorship advisory board.
She primarily makes her home in London, even though for many years he spent a lot of time between Karachi and London.
During this time, she used to occasionally teach creative writing at the New York-based Hamilton College Shamsie now lives primarily in London.
Kamila Shamsie’s work “Home Fire” is the story of a young woman named Isma. Ever since her mother and grandmother had died in quick succession, Isma had been left in charge of Parvaiz and Aneeka her younger twin siblings.
Her first priority has always been her siblings, even if it meant giving up her own ambitions and dreams. The twins have just officially become adults, and Isma can now finally put herself first.
She accepts an invitation from one of her mentors to coauthor a paper with her but first, she will need to travel to the United States. However, this does not mean that she is abandoning her siblings.
Parvaiz has left their home in London and is looking to understand their father’s legacy while the headstrong, beautiful, and smart Aneeka is studying law.
While she knows what she is doing will cause a rift in her family, she also knows she has to do what she believes is right. Still, she is determined to ensure that her brother will not follow in the Jihadi footsteps of her father.
When the son of a prominent British politician named Eamonn who has been struggling with his background as a Muslim comes into their lives, things start getting very complicated.
“Burnt Shadows” by Kamila Shamsie is set in Nagasaki in 1945 and ends in 2002 in an American prison cell where a man awaits his turn to be banished to Guantanamo Bay.
Hiroko Tanaka is a twenty-one-year-old that is very much in love with Konrad Weiss her fiance. At the opening of the novel, she just stepped onto the veranda wearing her beautiful kimono when her world is irrevocably and suddenly altered.
In the aftermath of the first atomic bomb being dropped on her city, the only thing she has left are some bird-shaped scars on her back that will forever remind her of everything she lost.
Looking for new beginnings, she travels to New Delhi two years later where he life becomes intertwined with that of Elizabeth who is her former fiance’s half-sister, James Burton her husband, and Sajjad Ashraf who helps her learn Urdu.
When Pakistan is created from the partition of India, Hiroko finds herself displaced as new conflicts replace old wars. However, history casts a huge shadow over all the families which are somehow all interconnected.
They are all transported from Pakistan to New York and in the climax to Afghanistan following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
Kamila Shamsie’s novel “Best of Friends is a work that tells the story of Maryam and Zahra who are best friends who were born and raised in Karachi.
The two are very different from each other as Maryam comes from a highly privileged family with high social standing.
On the other hand, Zahra’s family could get in trouble with the dictatorial Pakistani government and hence she has to make her decisions carefully to protect herself in later life.
One fateful night, Zahra and Maryam act out of character perhaps out of teenage rebellion, an act that completely changes their lives. They now have to deal with all manner of turbulence as the flaws of booth girls are evident.
After three decades we meet Maryam and Zahra once again as they are now powerful and influential women in the United Kingdom and are still very close.
Nonetheless, when some dark aspects of their former life in Karachi come to light, their bonds are tested to the limit.
Will their friendship be able to survive the difficult times?