Home Fire, by Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury, 2017)

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Neil

This new book by the multi-award winning Kamila Shamsie, a Pakistani-English author, was long-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize. Apparently, it's a contemporary reimagining of Sophocles'Antigone, but don't let that put you off. It's an extremely tense literary thriller, telling the story of a Muslim family in London and the pressures they find themselves under, from within and without the family, in this age of Islamic State. It's a story of divided loyalties, love and terrorism. Even if you have no particular interest in the issues raised by the novel, it's worth reading for the tension alone, which builds inexorably to its inevitable tragic conclusion. Quite brilliant.