Burnt Shadows | Kamila Shamsie

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her darling from the veranda as he leaves. Daylight streams crosswise over Urakami Valley, and afterward the world goes white.
In the staggering fallout of the nuclear bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan looking for fresh starts. From Delhi, in the midst of India's weep for freedom from British pioneer rule, to New York City in the prompt wake of 9/11, to the novel's shocking peak in Afghanistan, a fierce history throws its shadow the whole world over. Clearing in its degree and hypnotizing in its inspiration of time and spot, this is a story of affection and war, of three ages, and three world-changing memorable occasions. Consumed Shadows is a story for our time by "an essayist of colossal desire and quality. . . . This is an engrossing novel that directions in the peruser an incredible enthusiastic and scholarly reaction" (Salman Rushdie).