Learn About Kamila Shamsie on great-books.club

Kamila Shamsie

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Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi, where she grew up. She has a BA in Creative Writing from Hamilton College in Clinton, NY and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While at the University of Massachusetts she wrote
In The City By The Sea
, published by Granta Books UK in 1998. This first novel was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Award in the UK, and Shamsie received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in Pakistan in 1999. Her 2000 novel
Salt and Saffron
led to Shamsie’s selection as one of Orange’s “21 Writers of the 21st Century.” With her third novel,
Kartography
, Shamsie was again shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys award in the UK. Both Kartography and her next novel,
Broken Verses
, won the Patras Bokhari Award from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan. Burnt Shadows, Shamsie’s fifth novel, has been longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her books have been translated into a number of languages.

Shamsie is the daughter of literary critic and writer Muneeza Shamsie, the niece of celebrated Indian novelist Attia Hosain, and the granddaughter of the memoirist Begum Jahanara Habibullah. A reviewer and columnist, primarily for the Guardian, Shamsie has been a judge for several literary awards including The Orange Award for New Writing and The Guardian First Book Award. She also sits on the advisory board of the Index on Censorship.

For years Shamsie spent equal amounts of time in London and Karachi, while also occasionally teaching creative writing at Hamilton College in New York State. She now lives primarily in London.

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Kamila Shamsie

Kamila Shamsie

Books from Kamila Shamsie

Burnt Shadows

Kartography

Broken Verses

A God in Every Stone

Salt and Saffron

The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write

Eight Ghosts: The English Heritage Book of New Ghost Stories

In the City by the Sea

Granta 112: Pakistan

Granta 123: The Best of Young British Novelists 4

Lunatics, Lovers and Poets: Twelve Stories after Cervantes and Shakespeare

Duckling: A Fairy Tale Revolution

Offence: The Muslim Case

Writing Pakistan: Conversations on Identity, Nationhood and Fiction

Others: Writers on the power of words to help us see beyond ourselves

The Authors XI: A Season of English Cricket from Hackney to Hambledon

Resist: Stories of Uprising

A London Address: The Artangel Essays

Pursuit: The Balvenie Stories Collection

British Muslim Fictions: Interviews with Contemporary Writers