The Shakespeare and Company Interview
Arts:Books
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Kamila Shamsie’s new novel Best of Friends begins in Karachi in 1988, a year that would prove pivotal in the political history of Pakistan. Zahra and Maryam are teenagers, on the cusp of adulthood, finding their feet in a world where they have to keep one eye on the intrigues of the school yard and the other on the lives into which they are expecting or expected to step. Lives of vast opportunity but also uncertainty. In fact perhaps the only certainty for both Zahra and Maryam is their friendship. Rock solid since the age of four. But then something happens, or perhaps better to say almost happens, that continues to cast a shadow thirty years later when the story picks up again in London.
Buy Best of Friends here: https://www.shakespeareandcompany.com/product/5782828/kamila-shamsie-shamsie-best-of-friends
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Kamila Shamsie was born and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Her most recent novel Home Fire won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018. It was also longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, shortlisted for the Costa Best Novel Award, and won the London Hellenic Prize. She is the author of six previous novels including Burnt Shadows, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone, shortlisted for the Women’s Bailey’s Prize and the Walter Scott Prize. Her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow and Vice President of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013. She is professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester. She lives in London.
Adam Biles is Literary Director at Shakespeare and Company. Buy a signed copy of his novel FEEDING TIME here: https://shakespeareandcompany.com/S/9781910296684/feeding-time
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🛏️On Not Sleeping, with Marie Darrieussecq🛏️
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💎Sunday Poetry: Emilie Moorhouse reads from Emerald Wounds, her new translation of the poems of Joyce Mansour💎
🧠On Making Sense of a Murderer, with Mark O’Connell🧠
🗞️On Power, Pamphlets, Parties and Possible Worlds, with Adam Thirlwell🗞️
🪄On the KLF, Conspiracies, and Chaos with John Higgs🪄
Sunday Poetry: Nick Laird reads from Up Late
On Writing, Wormholes, and Wasted Opportunities, with Isabel Waidner
🏫On writing and translating The Topeka School, with Ben Lerner and Jakuta Alikavazovic🏫
🏇On Blood, Sweat and Racetracking, with Kathryn Scanlan🏇
BONUS: Lex Paulson on Cicero and the Future of Democracy
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On Anti-Memoir, the Weird, and New Kinds of Disaster, with M. John Harrison
On Unclassifiable Books and Uncategorisable Lives, with Xiaolu Guo
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