Burnt Shadows

Shamsie opens Burnt Shadows with two epigraphs—an excerpt from Kashmiri American Muslim poet Agha Shahid Ali and verses by the Indian poet Sahir Ludhianvi—which serve to orient the novel in terms of personal experiences of violent global conflict. Shamsie’s Prologue maintains this perspective, disorienting the reader by obscuring the location and the speaker while simultaneously grounding the reader in the emotional world of the novel. This withholding of circumstances in favor of emotional content is a stylistic choice Shamsie repeats often throughout the novel, usually at the beginnings of chapters.

Part 1 is the only section of the novel that is not divided into chapters. The uninterrupted telling of Hiroko and Konrad’s last day together establishes each of the major themes of the novel and creates a kind of origin story for Hiroko, the book’s primary protagonist. Throughout the rest of the novel, Hiroko will struggle to overcome the traumatic loss of her home, her father, and especially her first love, Konrad. Shamsie establishes Part 1 as a narrative touchstone with the title “The Yet Unknowing World,” an allusion to the end of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when Horatio tells the conquering Fortinbras, “And let me speak to th’ yet-unknowing world / How these things came about” (V.ii.380). This allusion positions the rest of the novel as an answer to the question posed by Raza in the Prologue, hinting that the entire story will lead up to the mysterious scene with which it opens. Shamsie’s use of present tense creates narrative momentum and adds a sense of immediacy to the events of the novel, maintaining dramatic tension even as the story approaches its inevitable conclusion.

Shamsie highlights the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a breaking point both in world history and for Hiroko personally, irreversibly altering the trajectory of her life. By linking Hiroko’s personal reorientation to the global paradigm shift after World War II, Shamsie begins to explore how geopolitical events are experienced on a personal scale. Shamsie literalizes the connection between the geopolitical and the personal by burning the bird image on the kimono into Hiroko’s body, making her inseparable from the bomb. Shamsie introduces the bird motif as an indicator of both violence and beauty by imagining Konrad’s politically dangerous notebooks as beautiful birds, then repeating the bird imagery with Hiroko’s burn.

Hiroko and Konrad are Shamsie’s first example of a romantic relationship that successfully navigates the challenges of cross-cultural intimacy, as Hiroko and Sajjad will later in the novel. Although cultural differences and the social pressures of wartime complicate Hiroko and Konrad’s relationship, Shamsie grounds their love in their mutual curiosity about other cultures, and especially in other languages. By allowing Konrad and Hiroko this combination of emotional and linguistic fluency, Shamsie equates language, communication, and intimacy.

Shamsie also uses Hiroko and Konrad’s independent struggles to introduce the theme of nationalism, the identification with one’s own nation, versus cosmopolitanism, the idea that all humans are part of a single, global community. Konrad believes in a cosmopolitan ideal and longs for Nagasaki to be filled with different kinds of people living in harmony, as it was before World War II. Konrad, who is not a Nazi supporter, is frustrated at being reduced to his German nationality, sarcastically saying to Yoshi in the bomb shelter, “So there are risks in the world greater than being associated with a German?” (12). Although Konrad’s frustration is grounded in a legitimate desire for peace, Shamsie is careful to present Yoshi’s rejection of Konrad as explainable, even if not excusable. Shamsie also reveals Hiroko’s distress at the nationalism prevalent among her young students, many of whom plan to become kamikaze pilots. Shamsie’s nuanced portrayal of the conflict between nationalism and cosmopolitanism is facilitated by her use of third-person omniscient narration, which allows the reader to understand each character’s motivations, emotions, and reasoning, even as Shamsie maintains cosmopolitanism as the ultimate ideal.

Shamsie also begins to explore the effects of trauma on identity and belonging in Part 1. World War II has displaced Konrad and already damaged Hiroko’s self-determination, preventing her from becoming a “modern girl.” With Hiroko’s observation of Nagasaki’s war-changed landscape, and the nuclear blast that renders Nagasaki unrecognizable, Shamsie posits that traumatic events rupture one’s sense of self—an idea she will both return to and challenge later in the novel.