BURNT SHADOWS

Biography of Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie is a writer and novelist. She was born in Karachi, Pakistan,
and currently lives in the UK. In addition to writing novels, she writes for
several publications including The Guardian, New Statesman, Index on
Censorship, and Prospect. She is also a creative writing professor at the
Manchester Centre for New Writing.Shamsie completed her high school
education in Karachi. She moved to the U.S. for college and earned her BA
from Hamilton College. She then earned an MFA in writing from the
University of Massachusetts–Amherst.

Shamsie has written seven novels: In the City by the Sea (1998), Salt and
Saffron (2000), Kartography (2002), Broken Verses (2005), Burnt Shadows
(2009), A God in Every Stone (2014), and Home Fire (2017). In 2009, she also
published a work of nonfiction entitled Offence: The Muslim Case.

In The City By the Sea was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the
UK, and in 1999 received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in
Pakistan. After the publication of Salt and Saffron, Shamsie was selected as
one of Orange’s 21 Writers of the 21st Century. Kartography (2002) was also
shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize in the UK. Burnt Shadows (2009)
was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction and won an Anisfield-Wolf
Book Award. A God in Every Stone (2014) was shortlisted for the 2015 Walter
Scott Prize and for the Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction. Home Fire (2017)
was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, shortlisted for the International IMPAC
Dublin Literary Award, and in 2018 won the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

About The Novel

Burnt Shadows is a novel by Pakistani-British novelist Kamila Shamsie.
Published in 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing, the novel follows two families
over the course of the second half of the twentieth century. Set in World War
II, the partition of India, Pakistan, New York 9/11, and Afghanistan, Shamsie
explores characters living through different events in the ever-changing
world history.

As history winds its way through war, colonial partition, and terrorist
organizations, two families will experience tragedy, love, and passionate
pursuits that will bring them together. Shamsie’s imagination is formidable,
and her character development is complemented by her lyrical writing skills.
The novel was praised as ambitious and magnanimous. Shamsie adapts her
own Pakistani-British background to deliver a story that uses literary
elements from both cultures. The book gives insight into geopolitical matters
and nationalist sentiments.

Burnt Shadows won the 2010 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for fiction. It was
nominated for the 2009 Orange Prize for fiction, the 2011 International IMPAC
Dublin Literary Award, and the Morning News Tournament of Books.

Summary
Burnt Shadows is a novel in four sections that details the story of two
different families, and how they connect. The story begins at the end of
World War II, and continues throughout the partition of India, wars in Pakistan
and Afghanistan, and 9/11.

As the novel opens, the reader is brought to the Guantanamo Bay detention
camp, a United States military prison in Cuba. An unnamed prisoner ponders
how he ended up at the highly guarded facility. The remainder of the novel
seeks to answer this prisoner’s question, following a timeline of events
beginning in 1945.

In Nagasaki, Hiroko Tanaka is a munitions worker living in Japan during the

end of World War II. Her love for the German Konrad Weiss is brought to an
expeditious end when an atomic bomb is dropped on the city. The tragic
event leads Hiroko to seek refuge in Delhi, India, where she stays with
Konrad’s half-sister, Elizabeth. She falls in love with Sajjad Ashraf, who is
teaching her the South-Asian language of Urdu.

After Sajjad’s mother dies, Hiroko and Sajjad marry. They take their
honeymoon in Istanbul, unaware of the fact that their departure means they
will never return to Delhi due to the imminent Partition. Hiroko and Sajjad
have a son, named Raza. Raza eventually meets a CIA agent named Harry
Burton, who is Elizabeth’s son.

Raza gets involved in the Afghanistan jihadist movement by posing as an

Afghan. He and his young friend, Abdullah, run away to a mujahideen
training camp. Sajjad, in his desperation to find his son, reveals the name of
a CIA operative at the wrong time and place and is shot and killed.

Years later, Elizabeth and Hiroko end up moving to New York to try to find
some stability in their lives. Elizabeth has divorced her husband James, and
taken on her original identity now that the war is over. Kim, Harry’s daughter,
spends a lot of time with the aging women.
Raza begins to work with Harry, who has left the CIA for a private contractor.
After 9/11, Kim is distraught. Harry and Raza are working on behalf of the
United States government in Afghanistan during the War on Terror. Raza, who
has not heard from Abdullah in decades, learns that he is on the run from the
FBI in New York City. At the same time, Raza is blamed for Harry’s murder
and has to go on the run as well.

Kim and Hiroko help Abdullah cross the border to Canada. Raza is waiting for
Abdullah there, and they have a conversation in a diner. Through the window
of the diner, Raza can see that Kim is turning Abdullah in to the police. Raza
tells Abdullah to run and takes his place. Kim and Raza meet face-to-face for
the first time as he is being taken away.

Although not directly stated, it is implied that Raza was the prisoner seen at
the beginning of the novel.

Characters
Hiroko Tanaka

Hiroko Tanaka (later Hiroko Ashef) is the protagonist of Burnt Shadows. She is
the only character who appears in every section of the novel. Hiroko is from
Nagasaki. She is 21 years old in 1945 when the United States military drops
an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, killing her father and her fiancé, Konrad Weiss.
Hiroko later moves to Delhi, where she meets Sajjad and falls in love. They
get married and after Partition they move to Pakistan, where they have a
son, Raza, and live happily for 35 years. After Sajjad dies in 1984, Hiroko
moves to New York City.

Hiroko is a strong-willed character who is suspicious of nations and religion.

She judges other people on their character rather than their stereotype. She
is excellent at learning languages and is fluent in Japanese, English, German,
and Urdu.

Konrad Weiss

Konrad Weiss is a German who was living in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb
is dropped. He was studying the lives of foreigners in Nagasaki before the
wartime atmosphere placed him under suspicion by the government. He was
engaged to Hiroko Tanaka. Elizabeth Burton is his half-sister; they share the
same father.
Sajjad Ashef

Sajjad is originally from Dehli, India. He is Muslim and his family originally
intends to provide him with an arranged marriage. He works for James
Burton in Delhi for eight years in the hopes of one day becoming a lawyer.
He gives Hiroko Urdu lessons while she is staying with the Burtons and they
fall in love. His employment with the Burtons is harshly terminated when
they falsely accuse him of trying to sexually assault Hiroko. After his mother
dies, he asks Hiroko to marry him. They take their honeymoon in Istanbul,
which means that they are forced to move to Pakistan instead of returning to
Dehli after Partition. This causes Sajjad great pain; he misses Dehli for the
rest of his life. In Pakistan, Sajjad is a manager at a factory. He is shot and
killed while looking for Raza, who goes missing.

Elizabeth Burton

Elizabeth Burton (also called Ilse) is a German woman living in Delhi during
the British Raj. She is married to James Burton and they have one son, Harry.
After Partition, she leaves her husband and moves in with her cousin in New
York City. While she carries prejudices against Indians as a result of her
colonial status in India, she is very kind to Hiroko.

James Burton

James Burton is Elizabeth’s husband. He lives in Delhi with her until Partition,
when he moves back to the UK. He is a solicitor.

Harry Burton

Harry is James and Elizabeth’s son. He is sent to boarding school in England

during his adolescence, leaving him constantly longing for home. He moves
with his mother to NYC after she leaves his father. He falls in love with the
United States and reveres it for its capitalism and acceptance of immigrants.
Later in life, he becomes a CIA agent. He lives in Pakistan during the Afghan
War, providing Afghan militants with weapons to support their war against
the Soviets. Later, he leaves the CIA to become a private contractor that is
hired by the U.S. government. This leads him to Afghanistan during the War
on Terror, where he is shot and killed by an Afghan man.

Raza Ashes

Raza is Hiroko and Sajjad’s son. He was born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan.
Sajjad hopes that Raza will grow up to become a lawyer. Unfortunately,
however, Raza fails his exams to graduate high school three times. Raza is
treated like he is an outsider in Karachi because he is mixed-race (his mother
is Japanese). Eventually, Raza makes friends with a young Afghan boy named
Abdullah. They run away to a mujahideen training camp together, which
tragically also causes Sajjad’s death.

After his father dies, Raza moves to Dubai where he works in a convenience
store with his cousins. Eventually, he gets in touch with Harry Burton who
gives him a job at the private contractor company where he is working. They
live near each other for ten years in Miami, doing contractor work on behalf
of the U.S. government all over the world. This leads Raza to Afghanistan to
support U.S. interests during the Afghanistan War. When Harry is killed, Steve
(Harry’s ex-CIA colleague) blames Raza. Raza goes on the run and gets
smuggled into Canada. There, he switches places with Abdullah, who is
about to be arrested because Kim Burton turned him in. He is sent to
Guantanamo Bay as a prisoner.

Kim Burton

Kim Burton is James’ daughter. She is strong-willed, with a fiery character.

Her loved ones see her as a kind, caring, and generous person. However, she
also has strong patriotic sentiment, especially after the September 11
terrorist attack. She is an engineer who specializes in constructing buildings
that are safe from disaster.

Abdullah

Abdullah is Raza’s friend from Karachi. He is a Pashtun from Afghanistan. He

and Raza go to a mujahideen training camp in the hopes of eventually joining
the Afghan war against the Soviets. After the war, Abdullah moves to NYC,
where he works as a taxi driver for several years. After 9/11, he is
approached by the FBI, which causes him to flee. Kim Burton smuggles him
into Canada, at Hiroko and Raza’s request. She ends up regretting her
decision and turns him in. However, Raza takes Abdullah’s place and
Abdullah is able to escape to safety.

Omar

Omar is a taxi driver in NYC from Pakistan. He is close friends with Hiroko.

Steve

Steve is Harry’s colleague in the CIA. He goes with Harry to Pakistan in the
80s and also works alongside Harry in Afghanistan in 2001.

Sher Mohammed

Sher Mohammed is Harry’s rickshaw driver in Karachi. He has ties to the CIA.
When Sajjad identifies him in the fish harbour while looking for Raza, Sher
Mohammed believes that Sajjad is there to kill him. He shoots Sajjad, killing
him.

Bilal

Bilal is Raza’s best friend and schoolmate. He and Raza live in the same
molholla (neighborhood).

Salma

Salma is Bilal’s sister. She and Raza keep up a secret relationship for several
months before she breaks up with Raza because she believes her parents
would never let her marry him.

Yoshi Wanatabe

Yoshi Wanatabe is Konrad’s friend in Nagasaki. Because of the tense wartime

atmosphere in Nagasaki where foreigners, especially Westerners, are under
intense suspicion, Yoshi stops being friends with Konrad. He promises Konrad,
however, that they will resume their friendship when the war is over.
After the bomb, Yoshi helps Hiroko move to Japan. He keeps in touch with
Hiroko over the following decades. He eventually dies of cancer and tells
Hiroko on the phone that he regrets his past life decisions.

Themes
The Logic of the Nation vs the Logic of the Individual

The Logic of the Nation vs the Logic of the Individual is perhaps the largest
theme in Burnt Shadows. Shamsie discusses this with Harleen Singh in a
2011 interview for Ariel Journal.

Shamsie: “Too many people think I’m making a particular comment on

America, but really I’m talking about nations in wartime and the particular
inhuman logic they start to follow when they decide what is an acceptable
price for some other nation’s people to pay. . . At the level of individual
human interaction, of course, there’s a different logic afoot. Where love and
friendship are possible—and they are possible in the most unlikely places
and combinations—then you have the opposite of an attitude of
separateness which says ‘I’ll accept your suffering because it’s in my own
self-interest.’”

As the characters in Burnt Shadows live within their own particular political
contexts, they forge connections across vastly different terrains of national
and personal identity. Hiroko and Konrad, from the very beginning of the
novel, for example, fall in love despite the strict social regimentation and
public suspicion towards foreigners in wartime Japan. Later, the Burtons
develop a decades-long friendship with Hiroko despite their different
national, cultural, and political backgrounds. Hiroko and Sajjad fall in love
despite these differences; their son, Raza, forms a close relationship with the
Burtons’ son, Harry. In New York, Hiroko befriends several taxi drivers,
including Omar. She then decides to help Abdullah, an Afghan on the run
from the FBI, because she intuits that he has a good character. Through all of
this, these characters choose to see each other as individuals rather than as
spokespeople for their nationality or class.

This is perhaps why the end of the novel, when Kim’s nationalistic impulses
obscure her perception of Abdullah, is so devastating. Her decision to follow
the “logic of the nation” and turn in Abdullah goes against the pattern of
behavior that the characters before her followed in the novel. The results are
devastating: Raza allows himself to be arrested in Abdullah’s place, and
Hiroko and Kim’s relationship is forever severed.
Changes Caused by War

We see many different wartime environments in Burnt Shadows: wartime

Japan, in the moments leading up to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki; India
in the months leading up to Partition and the end of English colonial rule;
Afghanistan during the Afghan war with the Soviets in the 80s; and New York
City and Afghanistan during the War on Terror.

In each of these environments, the characters reflect on how the war has
affected their lives. Hiroko notes that in 1945, Japanese society has become
more internally divided and suspicious of foreigners. The physical landscape
has also changed: where there were once flowerbeds and gardens, there are
now crops in order to combat wartime food scarcity.

In Delhi in 1947, Sajjad is affected by the religious conflict between Muslims

and non-Muslims, where previous social bonds are suddenly being tested.
This is a moment of tension and uncertainty; people are uncertain of which
country they will be living in in just a few months’ time. It leaves Sajjad
feeling stuck, uncertain of where his life will lead: “It was hardly a time to
consider a future career; everything was turmoil, every day brought news of
further atrocities, and relationships that had seemed to be cast in steel
disintegrated under the acid question: Are you for India or Pakistan?” (107).

Pakistan in 1982-3 has gained a growing population of Afghan refugees that

are fleeing Afghanistan’s war with the Soviets. Raza meets some of these
refugees and forms a close relationship with a young boy named Abdullah.
Eventually, Raza and Abdullah travel to a training camp for mujahideen (a
band of guerrilla fighters intending to fight the Soviets). Raza notes how the
Afghan presence in Karachi has changed the demographics of the city, as
more and more people look like him. Additionally, there are more Americans
in Karachi during this time, like Harry Burton, who are CIA operatives
supplying mujahideen with weapons to aid their war against the Soviets.

Finally, New York City and Afghanistan in 2001 are incredibly different
landscapes, though each is reeling from the War on Terror. Following 9/11,
New York City (and America as a whole) undergoes a surge of patriotic
sentiment. Many Americans, including Kim, develop a xenophobic fear of the
“other,” which leads to suspicion of Muslims and Middle Eastern immigrants.
In Afghanistan, the American military is conducting wartime operations,
including a bombing campaign that leaves towns and villages ruined.
Through all of this change, the characters in Burnt Shadows think fondly
about the past, which seems out of reach. They also express hopes for the
future, when peace and stability might someday come. However, the
concept of “home” is forever out of reach—for Hiroko, who cannot return to
Nagasaki; for Sajjad and Harry, who cannot return to Delhi; and for Raza,
who, at the end of the novel, is an outlaw and cannot return to the United
States to mourn Harry’s death.

Intimacy Through Language

In Burnt Shadows, language has the power to bring people together across
enormous divides. The multilingual characters make connections with others
outside of their home cultures via language. Raza reflects on the “weight”
attached to language via his mother’s story: “His mother would never have
met Konrad Weiss. . . if she hadn’t taught German to Yoshi Watanabe’s
nephew. And she would not have gone to India to find the Burtons if not for
Konrad Weiss. In India, it was language lessons that brought Sajjad and
Hiroko to the same table, overturning the separateness that would otherwise
have defined their relationship” (203).

This is the power of language in Burnt Shadows: it “overturn[s] the

separateness” between characters and allows them instead to form intimate
bonds. Being able to speak the same language allows the characters in Burnt
Shadows to create their own worlds where they speak a “secret language.”
This strengthens the bond between Hiroko and Elizabeth, for example:
“Together they walked back to the firelit gathering, neither remarking that
from the moment Hiroko had mentioned Konrad they had started to speak in
German, and that doing so felt like sharing the most intimate of secrets”
(71).

It is this intimacy that will bring the women together decades later, in
different periods of their lives, in New York City. It is a similar intimacy that
Hiroko found while speaking German with Konrad in Japan, that Raza finds
when speaking in Japanese with his mother, and that Raza also finds with
Abdullah while they speak together in Pashto and, eventually, English.

In contrast, the loss of language can signal the loss of intimacy between
characters. For example, in the midst of their failing marriage, Elizabeth no
longer speaks to James in German: “’Leibling’ appeared underlined, and
struck both of them as an accusation. She used to refer to him by that
endearment—in the days when German was her language of intimacy. Which
went first, he wondered? German or intimacy?” (74).

Difference

There are many instances in Burnt Shadows when characters are marked as
foreign or different within their political environments. In “The Yet Unknowing
World,” Konrad is socially ostracized because he is a foreigner. In “Veiled
Birds,” Hiroko stands out in Delhi and crosses between the strict social
divisions in Colonial India. Her presence is so uncertain that it makes the
Burtons and their English friends uneasy. Her presence as an outsider
“disrupt[s] all hierarchies,” leading to a tense conversation between Sajjad
and the Burtons (84). Later, in “Part-Angel Warriors,” she is also an outsider
in Karachi, where she is different from every mother in the moholla because
of her race, nationality, and the way she chooses to dress. Raza expresses
anger at his mother’s difference, demanding that she dress in the traditional
shalwar kameez and asking, “’Why can’t you be more Pakistani?’” (132).

Raza holds a complex social position within his moholla because he is not an
outsider but is nevertheless marked as different. Because his mother is
Japanese, he looks different from all of the other boys in his neighborhood.
This causes Raza to adopt a “studied awareness” in presenting himself to
others, making sure never to speak in Japanese in public: “Why allow the
world to know his mind contained words from a country he’d never visited?
Weren’t his eyes and his bone structure and his bare-legged mother
distancing factors enough?” (141). When Raza is rejected by his girlfriend,
Salma, he feels as if his fears about his difference have been confirmed: “he
realised that he had been waiting a long time for confirmation that he was. . .
not an outsider, no, not quite that. Not when he’d lived in this moholla his
whole life, had scraped and scabbed his knees on every street within a one-
mile radius. Not an outsider, just a tangent. In contact with the world of his
moholla, but not intersecting it” (192).

As more Afghans migrate to Pakistan to escape the Afghan war with the
Soviets, Raza is often misidentified as an Afghan. One day, Raza decides to
lie and say that he is, “and he felt the rightness of the lie press against his
spine, straightening his back” (167). This lie, born from Raza’s desperate
urge to feel completely accepted in his community, will eventually have
disastrous consequences. Raza will escape to a mujahideen training camp
with his newly-made Afghan friend, Abdullah; Sajjad, in his desperate quest
to find his son, will give away the identity of a CIA-affiliated man who will
then shoot and kill him. At the end of the novel, Raza and Abdullah meet
again after almost two decades and Abdullah tells Raza that he is an Afghan
in spirit. Finally, Raza gets the belonging he has been looking for his whole
life—right before he is taken away by the police and sent to Guantanamo
Bay.

Prayer as Transcendence

In “Part-Angel Warriors,” while Raza is in the mujahideen training camp,

Sajjad is desperately looking for him. In these emotionally fraught days, their
experiences mirror each other through religion. Neither Sajjad nor Raza
understands the Arabic words of their prayers. This makes prayer for both of
them an act of rote memorization rather than an experience of true faith. As
Raza reflects, “more often, prayer came to him from his mind, as memorised
words with little meaning attached” (234).

However, due to their extraordinary circumstances, Sajjad and Raza find new
approaches to prayer. As Raza prays with the mujahideen, he feels “a true
sense of reverence” and the words of the prayer “enter his mouth from a
place of pure faith” (234). Sajjad, on the other hand, connects the
unknowability of the words to the unknowability of the God who put him in
this situation: “He could not yell familiarly, familialy, at the Almighty and so
he prayed to Him in a language he didn’t understand, and felt the rightness
of incomprehension when dealing with a power which showed no mercy”
(240).

Raza and Sajjad transcend their lack of understanding of the words of their
prayers to find meaning. Though father and son are apart, they are together
in this religious experience.

Local vs Global Perspective

In “The Speed Necessary to Replace Loss,” Elizabeth, Hiroko, and Kim are
living in New York City just a few months after 9/11. The different ways that
they process 9/11 show their different worldviews: while Kim feels as if the
whole world has changed, Hiroko and Elizabeth understand 9/11 within a
global context where similar disasters have also happened. Kim’s local
worldview frustrates Kim, who reminds her that Manhattan is not “’the world,
it’s just the neighbourhood’” (254).

Hiroko is empathetic about the destruction caused by 9/11, and she

volunteers to help the community in the weeks following the attack.
However, she knows this kind of grief is not local. Train stations plastered
with missing person posters remind her of train stations in Nagasaki after the
atomic bomb. For Hiroko, this means they are all living in a similar history:
“In moments such as these it seemed entirely wrong to feel oneself living in
a different history to the people of this city” (279).

Elizabeth is more empathetic to her granddaughter’s struggles. When Kim

tells Elizabeth that she “’just want[s] the world to be as it was,’” Elizabeth
soothes her. She then tells her granddaughter, “’I’ve lived through Hitler,
Stalin, the Cold War, the British Empire, segregation, apartheid, God knows
what. The world will survive this’” (271). In this way, Elizabeth assures her
daughter that the bad times end, and “the world” will return to normal in due
time.

Kim’s local perspective is partly due to her privilege as an American. She

considers 9/11 to have changed the world because it is the only disaster that
she has had to live through. Harry laments that 9/11 has filled Kim with fear.
He muses, “In the valleys of Afghanistan, fear was necessary; he’d been
trained how to use it. But what did Kim know of moving through the world
with fear at your back?” (281).

Harry’s reaction to 9/11 is ambivalent, as he employs both a local and a

global perspective. While he found 9/11 “entirely unsurprising,” he was also
“stunned by his reaction” to 9/11, “the depth of his fury, the wish for all the
world to stop and weep with him for the city which had adopted him when he
was eleven” (276). He recognizes, however, that this kind of attitude is
“disproportionate” to the kind of terror others experience all over the world,
including the Democratic Republic of Congo where he is stationed and where
more than two and a half million people have been slaughtered in a never-
ending war (276).

Burnt Shadows encourages us not to view 9/11 as an isolated event. Not only
does a global worldview acknowledge that similar devastation has occurred
throughout history all over the world, the novel’s plot also shows us how the
United States government might have had a hand in this attack. As we
discover in “Part-Angel Warriors,” the American government funded jihadi
(referred to in the novel as mujahideen) movements during their cold war
against the Soviets. Shamsie touches on this historical connection in her
2011 interview with Harleen Singh for Ariel: “I was aware that conversation
about 9/11 tended to treat it as though that date was the Ground Zero of
history, as if it occurred in a vacuum, and as someone who grew up in
Pakistan in the 1980s, during the U.S.-Pakistan involvement in Afghanistan
and the political support given to jihad as an anti-Soviet tool, I couldn’t
possibly see things that way.”

Allegiance

As Steve is accusing Raza of being involved with Harry’s death at the end of
the novel, he brings up “the question of allegiance” (310). He finds it easy to
believe that Raza has collaborated with the Afghans who killed Harry
because he is Pakistani and Muslim. Raza is innocent in regards to Harry’s
death, but though he has been living in the country for 10 years, his
allegiance is not to the U.S. While trying to convince Kim Burton to help
Abdullah, he refers to the U.S. as her country: “’He’s an Afghan who ran from
the FBI. These day’s that’s the kind of thing your paranoid nation thinks is
evidence of terrorism’” (305). Kim is offended that Raza does not consider
himself an American, considering “he’d lived in Miami for a decade and was
a green-card holder in the process of applying for citizenship” (305).

Raza’s lack of allegiance to the United States is easy to understand,

however, when one considers that the country has little allegiance to him. As
soon as Harry is murdered, Raza is under suspicion, despite the fact that the
two men have been friends for many years. And, once Raza goes on the run,
he knows that his nationality and religion will do him little favors: “He had
never felt so sharply the powerlessness of being merely Pakistani” (314).

When Raza meets Abdullah’s brother, the question of allegiance is explored

further. Raza wants to know if Abdullah’s brother supports the Taliban, but
the other man refuses to give a clear answer. Instead, he says, “’I’m a
farmer. I want to plant crops and harvest them. Do you understand? I need
peace for this. I need security. In exchange for that, there’s much that I’ll
give up’” (326). In other words, Abdullah’s brother is willing to ally himself
with whatever power will improve his life in a material sense and save him
from the violence and destruction of war.

Kim, who has lived in the United States her entire life, has a hard time
understanding this complex perspective on allegiance. She is overcome with
nationalist sentiment following 9/11. Though she helps Abdullah cross the
border, she grapples with this decision their entire drive together. It is her
allegiance to the United States—rather than her allegiance to her family or to
the Burtons’ bond with the Ashrafs—that eventually wins.

Political context
Shamsie: “I was aware that conversation about 9/11 tended to treat it as
though that date was the Ground Zero of history, as if it occurred in a
vacuum, and as someone who grew up in Pakistan in the 1980s, during the
U.S.-Pakistan movement in Afghanistan and the political support given to
jihad as an anti-Soviet tool, I couldn’t possibly see things that way.”

The plot of Burnt Shadows spans 56 years, beginning with the dropping of
the atomic bomb in Nagasaki in 1945 and ending a few months after the
September 11th terrorist attack in 2001. The novel is set in many different
countries that are each experiencing their own political conflicts. This portion
of the guide is designed to give you some context on the various political
conflicts that are in the background of many of the novel’s settings and
affect the characters’ lives.

“The Yet Unknowing World” (Nagasaki, 9 August 1945)

[Wartime Atmosphere]

- Japan’s involvement in World War II is hard to pin down. As Yahiko

Koshiro argues in “Japan’s World and World War II,” Japan was fighting
many wars with many different nations: “One can understand Japan’s
war as a loose (though overlapping) sequence of different wars with
different names fought in diverse geopolitical and cultural landscapes.”

- There was strict surveillance of citizens in wartime Japan. The

suppression of thought and speech was common. Those who criticized
the government or the military (like Hiroko’s father in Burnt Shadows)
were arrested by the Special High police, referred to as “tokko.”
 - People’s lives became increasingly difficult as the war went on. They
lived through rationed food and constant fear military of air strikes.

- There was increased suspicion and hostility towards foreigners,

especially people from countries at war with Japan. In the wake of the
war, it was forbidden to use the language or play the music of the
‘hostile countries.’

[The Atomic Bomb]

- The atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, killed between

39,000 and 80,000 people. Roughly half of the deaths occurred on the
first day. Most of the dead were civilians.

- Nagasaki was a target because it was a major military port, one of

Japan’s largest shipbuilding and repair centers, and an important
producer of naval ordinance.

- The atomic bomb was headed to Kokura but redirected to Nagasaki

due to Kokura being obscured with black smoke caused by a
firebombing raid the previous day.

- Air-raid alarms went off in Nagasaki at 7:50 am Japanese time. At 8:30

am, an “all clear” signal was issued. At 11:01 am, the bomb was
dropped. It exploded at 11:02 am.
 - Survivors of the atomic bomb were referred to as “hibakusha.” It
literally translates in English to “explosion-affected people.” Hibakusha
and their children were victims of fear-based discrimination and
exclusion in post-war Japan.

“Veiled Birds” (Delhi, 1947)

[End of the British Raj]

- The British Empire colonized India (called the British Raj) from 1858 to
1947.

- British colonizers in India kept themselves separate from the Indian

population and did not assimilate to Indian culture.

- During the British Raj, India experienced some of the worst famines
ever recorded, which were made worse by British policies in India.

- In 1946, mutinies broke out in the armed forces against British rule.
They called for new elections in India later that year. There was also
discord between Hindus and Muslims, with riots breaking out in
Calcutta in August 1946.

- In late 1946, the British government decided to end the British rule of
India, primarily because of exhausted resources following World War II
and the growing religious tension within the Indian population.

- In early 1947, the British announced their intention to leave and

transfer power. There was continued violence between Hindus and
Muslims in the provinces of Punjab and Bengal.
[Partition]

- In June 1947, nationalist leaders agreed to Partition the country along

religious lines. The predominantly Hindu and Sikh areas were assigned
to the new nation of India and the predominantly Muslim areas to the
new nation of Pakistan.

- Millions of people, especially those living in border areas, relocated

across the newly drawn borders. Many cities broke out in violence,
leading to between 200,000 and two million deaths.

- The violent nature of the Partition created an atmosphere of hostility

and tension between India and Pakistan that continues to this day.

“Part-Angel Warriors” (Pakistan, 1992-3)

[Islamization in Pakistan]

- Islamization became the primary policy of the Pakistani government

under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, who ruled from 1977 until his
death in 1988. Zia intended to establish an Islamic state and enforce
sharia law.

- Under Zia, religious laws were adopted for government and judicial
protocols and civil governance. This included adding new offenses
(adultery, fornication, and types of blasphemy) and new punishments
(whipping, amputation, and stoning to death) to Pakistani law.
 - Many women began to dress more modestly, including wearing their
sleeves down to their wrists and covering their heads with a dupatta.

[Afghanistan and the mujahideen]

- The Afghan war began in 1978 between anticommunist Islamic

guerrillas (referred to as mujahideen) and the Afghan communist
government. Soviets invaded Pakistan in December 1979 due to these
insurgencies and the mujahideen rebellion grew in response. The U.S.
government backed the mujahideen by supplying them with weapons
via Pakistan.

- According to Britannica, “by 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans sought

asylum in Pakistan” during the war. In Karachi, most Afghans lived in
the neighborhood of Shorab Goth.

- The Soviets tried to eliminate mujahideen civilian support by bombing

and depopulating rural areas. Eventually, the mujahideen were able to
fight back against the air strikes using shoulder-fired antiaircraft
missiles supplied by the U.S. government.

- The Afghan war continued until 1988, when the U.S., Pakistan,
Afghanistan, and the Soviet Union signed an agreement that the Soviet
Union would withdraw troops from Afghanistan. The Afghan war
officially ended in 1992.

- However, there was continued political unrest in the country.

 - The Taliban, a puritanical Islamic group, took control of Afghanistan in
1996. They fought against a loose coalition of mujahideen forces called
the Northern Alliance.

“The Speed Necessary to Replace Loss” (New York, Afghanistan, 2001-2)

[U.S.]

- On September 11, 2001, militants associated with the Islamic extremist

group al Qaeda hijacked four airplanes and carried out suicide attacks
in the United States. Two of the airplanes hit the World Trade Center in
New York City. The third plane hit the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia.
The fourth plane crashed into a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Almost 3,000 people were killed.

- Al Qaeda cited the US’s support of Israel, American immorality,

sanctions imposed against Iraq, the presence of the U.S. military in
Saudi Arabia, and conflict in Somalia, Chechnya, Kashmir, Lebanon,
and the Philippines as their motives for the attack.

- There was a huge rise in xenophobia, especially Islamophobia, across

the U.S. as a result of the attack. Muslims experienced intense scrutiny
and distrust all over the country.

[Afghanistan]

- In 2001, the Taliban refused the United States’s request to extradite

Saudi Arabian exile Osama Bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaeda, an
extremist group that had ties to the Taliban.
 - As a result, U.S. special operations forces, allied with Northern Alliance
fighters, launched a series of military operations that drove the Taliban
from power in December 2001. This was the beginning of the
Afghanistan War, which lasted until 2014

Questions
Burnt Shadows Essay Questions

1)What were the effects of war on the characters of Burnt Shadows?

Ans) The first section of Burnt Shadows is set in a war-torn Nagasaki, Japan,
during World War II, moments before the United States drops an atomic
bomb on the city. This section of the novel explores how the lives of
Nagasaki’s residents have changed during the war and the effects of the war
on their environment.

“The Yet Unknowing World” shows us that the key—and most drastic—
negative effect of war is the loss of innocent lives. American airstrikes in
Japan led to the creation of airstrike shelters where people would go once a
warning was issued. After the atomic bomb is dropped, many people die,
including Hiroko’s father and fiancee, Konrad. Hiroko herself is badly injured.

Other effects of war in Japan are that personal freedoms were limited. Konrad
felt that his freedom of expression was limited and he had to hide his books
where they had written about Imperial Japan. Matsui Tanaka, Hiroko’s father,
was arrested and detained for two weeks without a fair trial. Hiroko is treated
with suspicion because she is marked as a “traitor’s daughter.” There is
heavy governmental surveillance which puts communities on edge and
makes people turn on their friends. For example, Yoshi and Konrad are close
friends before the war; however, due to the political suspicion of foreigners
during the war, Yoshi no longer associates with Konrad in public.

2)How is the theme of Individual vs. Nation developed in Burnt Shadows?

Ans) Hiroko Tanaka is the main character of Burnt Shadows. We follow her life
over a period of almost 60 years, from Nagasaki, to Delhi, to Karachi, to New
York City. Over this time, we watch as she engages with the cultures and
nations she is living in. Hiroko explicitly disagrees with the idea of
“nationality” and regards social customs that tear people apart with
suspicion. This is evident from the first section of the book, when she
pursues a romantic relationship with Konrad despite the fact that foreigners
are treated with intense suspicion in wartime Japan. Later, she grows close
with Sajjad despite the fact that she is living in the Burton household and
they see Sajjad as a mere employee who comes from a “different world.” In
Karachi, she is suspicious of the Pakistani government making religion public,
which results in a cultural “Islamisation.” Finally, in New York City, she
develops friendships with taxi drivers from Pakistan, including Omar. She also
chooses to help Abdullah, even though he is on the run from the US
government.

In each of these instances, Hiroko looks at an individual’s character rather

than their national or political identity. She knows that Abdullah is a good
man, despite the fact that he is being pursued by the government.

Hiroko disagrees with people, like Kim, who feel allied with a particular
national identity. She feels as if these people are misguided: “She felt about
people who believed in the morality of their nations exactly as she felt about
those who believed in religion: it was baffling, it seemed to defy all reason,
and yet she would never be the one to attempt to wrestle the comfort of
illusory order away from someone else” (335).

3) Language is an important motif in Burnt Shadows. How is the motif

developed? How do the characters use language in the novel?

Ans) The characters use language in Burnt Shadows to build intimacy with
each other across their differences. An example of this is Hiroko’s
relationship with Sajjad, which is able to flourish because Sajjad gives Hiroko
Urdu lessons. As Hiroko learns Urdu, they are able to speak to each other in
both English and Urdu, which gives them more room for mutual
understanding. For example, after Hiroko tells Sajjad about losing Konrad, he
asks her if she would like to be consoled in the English way (by leaving her
alone in her grief) or in the Urdu way (by joining her in her grief and trying to
take some of it from her). As Hiroko learns Urdu, she also enters Sajjad’s
world, and can connect with him more fully as a result.

4) Choose two characters and compare/contrast them. How are they

different? Do they find common understanding despite their differences?
Ans) Two characters in Burnt Shadows that are vastly different are Hiroko
and Kim. Hiroko does not believe in the idea of a nation and thinks that
people who hold on to nationalistic sentiments are naïve. In contrast, Kim is
overcome with her feelings of patriotism following the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Kim and Hiroko’s differences come to a head when a character from Raza’s
past, Abdullah, is on the run from the American Government. Hiroko’s first
instinct is to help the man, while Kim treats him with suspicion. Eventually,
Kim ends up turning Abdullah in to the government, but Raza takes
Abdullah’s place.

5) Explain the significance of Kim Burton’s decision to turn Abdullah in at the

end of the novel. Do you think she would have intentionally turned in Raza if
she knew he was on the run from the government?

Ans) Kim Burton’s decision to turn in Abdullah at the end of Burnt Shadows
was borne out of her nationalism and xenophobia, exacerbated by the
terrorist attack on September 11th. She turned Abdullah in because he is a
stranger she does not understand; to her, he is just an Afghan, like the man
who killed her father. Raza, on the other hand, is someone she has been
hearing about in family stories her entire life. While she can dehumanize
Abdullah, she cannot so easily dehumanize Raza, who is part of her family
history. Because of this, I don’t think Kim would have turned Raza in.