Home Fire: An Evening with Kamila Shamsie
A Visions and Voices Signature Event

Reception and book signing to follow.

ADMISSION:
Admission is free. Reservations required. 

USC Students, Staff, and Faculty: RSVP
USC Alumni: RSVP
General Public: RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
“Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world’s many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age.”—Salman Rushdie

“Ingenious and love-struck … Builds to one of the most memorable final scenes I’ve read in a novel this century.” —New York Times

“[U]rgent and explosive … near perfect … a difficult book to put down.” —NPR

“All of Shamsie’s novels are deeply moving and morally complex, leading to the kind of rich reading experience most of us hope for in every novel we pick up. Her newest has all of that and more.” —San Francisco Chronicle

Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire is the winner of the 2018 Women's Prize for Fiction, the UK's most prestigious prize for women in fiction. The book is a contemporary retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone that asks: What motivates a person to leave home and family? What does national identity look like when you are perceived as a dangerous minority? And what sacrifices will we make for love? Join us for an engaging discussion of Home Fire with its award-winning author, named one of Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. The conversation will be facilitated by Sarah Gualtieri, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity and history at USC.

Bios:
Kamila Shamsie is the author of eight books, including Broken Verses and Burnt Shadows. She has been a finalist for the Orange Prize (twice) and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, among other honors, and has been named one of Granta’s “Best of Young British Novelists” and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was raised in Karachi and lives in London.

Sarah Gualtieri is associate professor in the Departments of History and American Studies and Ethnicity, and former Director of the Middle East Studies Program at USC. Her research focuses on questions of race, gender, and migration as they relate to the movement and circulation of peoples from greater Syria to the Americas. Gualtieri’s publications include her book Between Arab and White: Race and Ethnicity in the Early Syrian American Diaspora (University of California Press, 2009). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship to advance her project on Syrians in Southern California.

Additional Links:
Home Fire | Goodreads, New York Times review, Vogue review, Wikipedia
Kamila Shamsie | Facebook, Penguin Random House profile, The Guardian columns, Twitter

Presented by USC Visions and Voices: The Arts and Humanities Initiative. Co-sponsored by the USC Department of Classics, USC Department of English, USC Department of Middle East Studies, and the USC Office of Religious Life.

Photo: Zain Mustafa