Kamila Shamsie

Shamsie was born in Karachi to a literary family three generations deep: her mother Muneeza Shamsie is a critic, her great-aunt Attia Hosain a celebrated novelist, and her grandmother Begum Jahanara Habibullah a memoirist. She studied creative writing at Hamilton College and earned an MFA at UMass Amherst.

Home Fire (2017), her seventh novel, reimagines Sophocles's Antigone among a British Muslim family whose son is recruited by ISIS, entangling them with the family of Britain's hardline Home Secretary; it won the Women's Prize in 2018 after two earlier Orange Prize shortlistings.

She holds dual Pakistani and British citizenship, was named to Granta's Best of Young British Novelists, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.