Bestselling author Kamila Shamsie’s seventh novel, Home Fire, tops the Best Book lists of 2017. The contemporary story’s deep lingering impression is summed up by two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey: “Home Fire left me awestruck, shaken, on the edge of my chair, filled with admiration for her courage and ambition. Recommended reading for prime ministers and presidents everywhere.” Kirkus calls it “an explosive novel with big questions about the nature of justice, defiance, and love…a powerful novel and a timely one.” Born and raised in a literary family in Karachi, Pakistan, Shamsie earned her bachelor’s degree from Hamilton College and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she wrote her first novel, In the City by the Sea. Her debut was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Award in the U.K. and won the Prime Minister’s Award for Literature in Pakistan. Shamsie’s second novel, Salt and Saffron, led to her selection as one of Orange’s “21 Writers of the 21st Century.” Her novels Kartography and Broken Verses won top prizes from the Academy of Letters in Pakistan, and Burnt Shadows, a tale of love and war, three generations, and three world-changing historic events, was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Author Salman Rushdie hails Shamsie "a writer of immense ambition and strength.”