Kamila Shamsie is the author of the new novel “Burnt Shadows,” which has been shortlisted for the 2009 Orange Prize for fiction.
Salman Rushdie calls her “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.”
Two of her previous novels, “Kartography” and “Broken Verses,” have won awards from Pakistan’s Academy of Letters. Her first novel, “In the City by the Sea,” was shortlisted for the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.
Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi, Pakistan. She earned her MFA at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and has taught creative writing at Hamilton Colllege.
She writes for the Guardian (U.K.) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC.
