UK Literary Award for Fiction Won by Pakistan’s Kamila Shamsi
UK Literary Award for Fiction Won by Pakistan’s Kamila Shamsi: Pakistani origin British author, Kamila Shamsie, excelled on the international stage at the UK’s recent prominent literary award. The Karachi-born writer won the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction, earlier known as the Baileys Prize and Orange Prize, for her seventh novel, Home Fire at a ceremony in central London hosted by Author Kate Mosse, the founder of the prize.
According to Penguin Random House publishers, the novel, a reworking of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Antigone, contains “the suspenseful and heartbreaking story of an immigrant family driven to pit love against loyalty, with devastating consequences”.
The other shortlisted books included
- The Idiot by Elif Batuman,
- The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar,
- Sight by Jessie Greengrass,
- When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy and
- Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward.
The winning author received £30,000 in prize money and a Bessie – a limited edition bronze figurine.
According to BBC, Sarah Sands, chair of judges, said the panel had chosen “the book which we felt spoke for our times”.
She said: “Home Fire is about identity, conflicting loyalties, love and politics. And it sustains mastery of its themes and its form. It is a remarkable book which we passionately recommend.”
“It was a hard-argued choice, but it was unanimous,” said Sands, who is editor of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “It was extremely difficult, because of the richness and variety of the shortlist – imagine how you compare the experience of race in America versus courtesans and mermaids. But when we set out to decide what felt like the story of our times, [Home Fire] was the right choice.”
With Shamsie’s novel anticipating a British Muslim home secretary – since the novel was released, Sajid Javid was appointed to the role – Sands praised the novel’s “astonishing prescience” and “the breadth of its ambition”.
Shamsie, who has been shortlisted for the Women’s prize twice before, is a vocal supporter of female authors. In 2015, she slammed the gender bias she saw in the books world and called for a dedicated year of publishing only women in order to redress the inequality.
Pointing to the fact that just under 40% of novels submitted to the Man Booker prize in the five years before were by women, she praised the work done by the Women’s prize, which was established in 1996 after the Booker failed to shortlist a single woman.
The award, wrote Shamsie three years ago, had helped to “create a space for women in a male-dominated world, giving voice and space to those who wouldn’t find them elsewhere”.
On the achievement, the author received massive felicitations on social media.
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