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Sto caricando le informazioni... Ombre bruciate (2009)di Kamila Shamsie
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Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro. Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro. Il 9 agosto 1945 a Nagasaki, Hiroko Tanaka esce sulla veranda di casa: leggera dei suoi ventun anni, innamorata del suo Konrad, i pensieri alati come le tre gru che le attraversano la schiena, ricamate sul suo kimono. All'improvviso, il cielo esplode di un bianco abbagliante e le strade si anneriscono di migliaia di ombre... E nel giro di un istante a Hiroko non rimane più nulla, a parte tre ustioni a forma di gru sulla schiena, ricordo indelebile di tutto ciò che la bomba le ha strappato. Due anni dopo arriva a Delhi, desiderosa di ricominciare. Come un fresco temporale estivo, entra nelle vite di Elizabeth, la sorella di Konrad, di suo marito James Burton, e di Sajjad Ashraf, un giovane indiano alle dipendenze dei Burton, da cui inizia a prendere lezioni di urdu. Gli anni passano, nuovi legami sostituiscono quelli perduti, vecchie guerre cedono il passo a nuovi conflitti. Ma tanto la Storia quanto le vicende personali gettano la loro ombra sulle vite ormai saldamente annodate dei Tanaka, dei Burton e degli Ashraf, trasportati dal Pakistan a New York, e di lì all'Afghanistan, all'indomani dell'11 settembre...
Shamsie delicately builds the momentum of everyday life against the insidiously political situations of our times, arriving at surprisingly plausible plot twists. This is, more than anything else, a tribute to her skills as a writer of sharp, compact narratives that leave the reader enticed and provoked in equal measure. In the novel’s best moments, Hiroko acknowledges the hubris that accompanies the word “home” and occasionally convinces us of “the shameful resilience of the human heart.” Too often, though, we lose her in the web of a half-dozen other personalities who confront their own displacements — the Weiss-Burtons and the Tanaka-Ashrafs — friends whose personalities should overcome their “complicated shared history.” Sadly, for me, they do not. You can pick holes in this three-generational tale of white oppression, but you can't argue with deeply held beliefs. This is what a Pakistani novelist, Kamila Shamsie, believes. It's instructive to read this, on many levels. Shamsie's challenge is to build the architecture through strong characters without letting the burden of history crush the structure. In Hiroko, she has created just such a character. Some of the minor characters aren't always capable of bearing that burden. They remain true to the message Shamsie conveys – of the common humanity of our interwoven lives. But the pace compresses them. Shamsie has squeezed a violent century's universe into a ball, and rolled it forward with an overwhelming question: Why? Any reader anticipating a predictable yarn about the radicalisation of Islamist youth may feel cheated. Far more, I suspect, will feel challenged and enlightened, possibly provoked, and undoubtedly enriched. Premi e riconoscimentiElenchi di rilievo
In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders. August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one, in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashrafs and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in its evocation of time and place, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed. Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche |
Già recensito in anteprima su LibraryThingIl libro di Kamila Shamsie Burnt Shadows è stato disponibile in LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Discussioni correntiNessunoCopertine popolari
Google Books — Sto caricando le informazioni... GeneriSistema Decimale Melvil (DDC)823.914Literature English English fiction Modern Period 1901-1999 1945-1999Classificazione LCVotoMedia:
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