My daughter Katie recommended Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie so I read it. I had read some reviews of Home Fire where I found out it tells an updated story of Sophocles’s play Antigone.
For those of you who have forgotten your Greek plays, King Creon insists the traitorous Polynices cannot be buried within the walls of Thebes. Antigone fights that decision.
In Home Fire Polynices is renamed Parvaiz. Parvaiz is a British Muslim boy who becomes radicalized and heeds the call of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. Although Parvaiz and his two sisters, Aneeka and Isma, grew up in Wembley, West London, they have not assimilated. Also, their father was a jihadist who died being transferred to Guantánamo.
An Isil recruiter tells Parvaiz that his father was tortured by the Americans in Bagram, Afghanistan. To avenge his father’s death, Parvaiz must join Isil and join the jihad against the West.
Antigone is renamed Aneeka in Home Fires. Aneeka freaks out when she finds that her brother has left for Syria to join the Jihadists. By chance, Aneeka meets Eamonn, the son of the Home Secretary. Eamonn comes from a very different Muslim background than Aneeka. Karamat (who serves as the Creon character) is Eamonn’s wealthy, politically powerful father.
Eamonn is a trust-fund baby. Aneeka seduces him. This seems to be cunning tactic by Aneeka to get Eamonn’s powerful family to help her rescue her brother. Meanwhile, Parvaiz is shocked and dismayed by what he discovers in the murderous caliphate. Parvaiz wants to return home to England.
Home Fire explores the political dimensions of terrorism using the power of Sophoceles’s play to highlight the tensions of class, wealth, and religion.
Happy Birthday, Katie! Thanks for the recommendation! GRADE: A
Happy birthday, Katie! You picked some pretty cool people to be born to.
Jerry, we’re the lucky ones! Katie is a wonderful daughter…and loves to read!
Happy Birthday, Katie!
Hmm, I wonder if the book has the same ending as the play.
Jeff, no spoilers here!
Why not read the play, instead of an “interpretation”? To me, it sounds awful. There’s enough of that in the newspapers. Maybe I’m being an ostrich, but I’ll ignore.
Rick, updating classics has become a cottage industry lately. “Hamlet,” “Macbeth,” “King Lear” or “Othello,” have been turned into contemporary stories by novelists Gillian Flynn, Jo Nesbo, Edward St. Aubyn and Tracy Chevalier. Turning ANTIGONE into a novel just shows you where the genre is going.
I’m with Rick!
Happy birthday, Katie!
Bob, there’s an audience for updated classics. Just look at the success of RENT that was just performed live on TV. It’s based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème. You can go back to WEST SIDE STORY which was based on ROMEO AND JULIET. This is nothing new.
I know all that, George, but it doesn’t sound appealing to me!
I’m with Bob on that.
I’m with George. If you can make a story relevant, to today’s readers, that’s an achievement. Maybe the reader will go back and read the original. And even if they don’t, they are still reading.
Patti, I totally agree!
So do I, but I’m not today’s reader!