Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire, which reworks Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone to tell the story of a British Muslim family’s connection to Islamic State, won the Women’s Prize for Fiction this week, acclaimed by judges as “the story of our times”. John Boyne, reviewing it in The Irish Times, called it “a provocative work which will inspire the admiration of many but may at the same time infuriate readers expecting a more black and white depiction of terrorists versus non-terrorists, Muslims versus non-Muslims, the role of the state versus the rights of the civilian. It takes a brave writer to tackle these subjects in such a nuanced fashion and a fearless one to recognise that there is enough blame for all parties.”
Just a reminder that Grace by Paul Lynch is June’s Irish Times Book Club selection. The winner of the €15,000 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year award will be interviewed by Laura Slattery for a podcast at the Irish Writers Centre in Dublin’s Parnell Square on Thursday, June 21st, at 7.30pm.
Coming up in Saturday’s Irish Times book pages, Michael Ondaatje talks to Arminta Wallace about his new novel, Warlight; Brian Dillon writes about the early loss of his parents and the nature of memory, subject of his resissued memoir, In the Dark Room; Dublin Review of Books co-editor Enda O’Doherty discusses the rise of the long-form essay; plus we have Patrick Geoghegan on The King and the Catholics: The Fight for Emancipation 1829 by Antonia Fraser; Martina Evans on Mind on Fire by Arnold Fanning; Ian Maleney on Daniel Trilling’s refugee study, Lights In The Distance; NJ McGarrigle on All the Pieces Matter: The Inside Story of The Wire by Jonathan Abrams; Houman Barekat on He is Mine I Have No Other by Rebecca O’Connor; Paul McVeigh on Orchid & the Wasp by Caoilinn Hughes; Rob Doyle on The Mars Room by Rachel Kushner; Seán Hewitt on Anuradha Roy’s The Lives We Never Lived; Sarah Gilmartin on Only Killers and Thieves by Paul Howarth; Éilís Ní Dhuibhne on Denyse Woods’ Of Sea and Sand; Jane Urquhart on Victoria Glendinning’s The Butcher’s Daughter; and Claire Hennessy on the best new YA writing.
