'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' MADELINE MILLER
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL AND FINANCIAL TIMES
A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction
Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business; while Zahra keeps her desires secret, and dreams of escaping abroad.
This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls' childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.
Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition.
Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those who've loved us the longest.
'A new Kamila Shamsie novel is always worth celebrating, but Best of Friends is something else: an epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' Observer, Books of the Year 2022
A haunting novel which asks big questions about justice, class, and the borders of our moral selves, all wrapped around the deliciously absorbing story of a childhood friendship that endures - fun, complicated, the kind of friendship that feels elemental
-- MEGHA MAJUMDAR, author of A BURNINGHer prose is propulsive and unfailingly elegant, and her eye for detail is acute ... A brave and brilliant novel
- Sunday TimesManaged to do all the things I want novels to do - tell me something about the world, give me a tiny glimpse into the otherness of others, and, most of all, give me that ache of longing as I turned the last page and realised I would never meet these characters again
-- Tahmima Anam - ObserverShamsie's writing resonates on the human, political and lyrical plane but its topicality, tight plot and vivid characterisation also suggest a film script in the making
- New Statesman, Books of the YearElegant and evocative ... A powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world, tipping its hat to the same dilemma in the ancient one
- GuardianBuilds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century ... There is high, high music in the air at the end of Home Fire
- New York TimesUtterly contemporary and deeply original too
-- Arifa Akbar - Evening StandardOne of the best novels of the year ... magnificent ... Insistently intelligent without becoming didactic ... conveyed in prose of stunning suppleness and economy ... Home Fire is everything literary fiction should be - an exciting, beautiful, profound novel of lasting value that deserves laurels
- SpectatorKamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her most recent novel Home Fire won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women's Bailey's Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London.
@kamilashamsie
'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' MADELINE MILLER
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL AND FINANCIAL TIMES
A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction
Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business; while Zahra keeps her desires secret, and dreams of escaping abroad.
This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls' childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.
Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition.
Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those who've loved us the longest.
'A new Kamila Shamsie novel is always worth celebrating, but Best of Friends is something else: an epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship, the possibility of escape, the way the political world intrudes into the personal, all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' Observer, Books of the Year 2022
A haunting novel which asks big questions about justice, class, and the borders of our moral selves, all wrapped around the deliciously absorbing story of a childhood friendship that endures - fun, complicated, the kind of friendship that feels elemental
-- MEGHA MAJUMDAR, author of A BURNINGHer prose is propulsive and unfailingly elegant, and her eye for detail is acute ... A brave and brilliant novel
- Sunday TimesManaged to do all the things I want novels to do - tell me something about the world, give me a tiny glimpse into the otherness of others, and, most of all, give me that ache of longing as I turned the last page and realised I would never meet these characters again
-- Tahmima Anam - ObserverShamsie's writing resonates on the human, political and lyrical plane but its topicality, tight plot and vivid characterisation also suggest a film script in the making
- New Statesman, Books of the YearElegant and evocative ... A powerful exploration of the clash between society, family and faith in the modern world, tipping its hat to the same dilemma in the ancient one
- GuardianBuilds to one of the most memorable final scenes I've read in a novel this century ... There is high, high music in the air at the end of Home Fire
- New York TimesUtterly contemporary and deeply original too
-- Arifa Akbar - Evening StandardOne of the best novels of the year ... magnificent ... Insistently intelligent without becoming didactic ... conveyed in prose of stunning suppleness and economy ... Home Fire is everything literary fiction should be - an exciting, beautiful, profound novel of lasting value that deserves laurels
- SpectatorKamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her most recent novel Home Fire won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women's Bailey's Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London.
@kamilashamsie
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