Kamila Shamsie

Standard Name: Shamsie, Kamila
Birth Name: Kamila Naheed Shamsie
KS is best known for her novels, which engage with political and aesthetic complexities of Pakistani culture. She also contributes short stories to anthologies of both British and Pakistani fiction. Her writing frequently examines topics of history, nationality, family relations, and feminism, with recurring motifs of displacement, nostalgia, and cultural alienation. Her political pieces include an extended polemic essay on Muslim archetypes, and innumerable journalistic comments on Pakistani history, political movements, and culture. Novelist Aminatta Forna has noted the duality of KS 's influence as both writer and public intellectual.
Freeman, John. “Kamila Shamsie is Bringing Pakistani History to a Global Audience”. Literary Hub, 7 Aug. 2017.
Colour photo of Kamila Shamsie, standing and holding her book Burnt Shadows during the Orange Prize for Fiction event at the Royal Festival Hall in London, 3 June 2009.
Head-and-shoulders colour photo of Kamila Shamsie in semi-profile. She has brown, curly, shoulder-length hair and wears a brown leather jacket and a pendant. She seems to be discussing something, gesturing with one hand.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Rosita Forbes
Her reputation has not so far endured. In 2014 Pakistani-British novelist Kamila Shamsie expressed regret about the obscurity in which Forbes (who, she said, has influenced her own writing) remains bafflingly shrouded despite her extraordinary...
Literary responses Helen Oyeyemi
Reviews were more mixed for this second novel. Reviewers praised HO 's writing style and her handling of her difficult themes. Kamila Shamsie said HO 's gift for language, her emotional intelligence and most of...
Textual Production Ali Smith
In August at the Edinburgh International Book Festival , three months before publication, AS stated her concern for the future of the public library system itself. As a narrative thread, she collected personal oral library...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Ali Smith
AS and Litt's contribution to the New Writing anthology series prefaced its inclusions with a generalized pronouncement that current women's writing was disappointingly domestic, the opposite of risk-taking—as if too many women writers have been...

Timeline

No timeline events available.

Texts

Shamsie, Kamila. A God in Every Stone. Bloomsbury, 2014.
Shamsie, Kamila. “A long, loving literary line”. theguardian.com.
Shamsie, Kamila. “A Woman who couldn’t be tamed”. Daily Telegraph, pp. R26 - R27.
Shamsie, Kamila. Broken Verses. Bloomsbury.
Shamsie, Kamila. Burnt Shadows. Bloomsbury, 2009.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Exiled: the disturbing story of a citizen made unBritish”. theguardian.com.
Shamsie, Kamila. Home Fire. Riverhead Books, 2017.
Shamsie, Kamila. In the City by the Sea. Granta Books, 1998.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Kamila Shamsie on applying for British citizenship: ’I never felt safe’”. The Guardian.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Kamila Shamsie on Intizar Hussain’s Novel, Basti”. Literary Hub.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Kamila Shamsie: writing about ancient history licensed my imagination”. The Guardian.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Kamila Shamsie: ‘It took me 17 years to get round to War and Peace’”. The Guardian.
Shamsie, Kamila. Kartography. Bloomsbury, 2002.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Let’s have a year of publishing only women – a provocation”. theguardian.com.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Mulberry Absences”. Leaving Home, edited by Muneeza Shamsie and Muneeza Shamsie, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 394-6.
Shamsie, Kamila. Offence. Seagull Books, 2009.
Shamsie, Kamila. Salt and Saffron. Bloomsbury, 2000.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Surface of Glass”. And the World Changed, edited by Muneeza Shamsie and Muneeza Shamsie, The Feminist Press at The City University of New York, 2008, pp. 315-9.
Shamsie, Kamila. “The book that made me a feminist”. The Guardian.
Shamsie, Kamila. “The Gods Go Abroad”. theguardian.com.
Shamsie, Kamila. “The Storytellers of Empire”. Guernica.
Shamsie, Kamila. “This attack struck Pakistan’s last redoubt of national pride”. The Guardian.
Shamsie, Kamila. “Writers’ Holiday Photos: Postcards from My Past”. The Guardian.