After a chance meeting, Isma and Eamonn fall into a casual friendship - she is painfully aware of their families’ previous history, while he is oblivious - setting their families’ fates on a collision course.

I am late to the party on this one, and I am so glad I finally picked it up. Set in and around a British-Pakistani community, Shamsie explores what it means to be a British Muslim in terms of identity, belonging and the humiliation of having to constantly prove one’s “Britishness” and loyalty to the UK. It is also a deeply critical of anti-Muslim political rhetoric, the harassment it incites, and various knock-on effects - a critique which (sadly) continues to be relevant today, and not just in the UK. The idealised draw of jihad and active recruitment amongst disillusioned youth was an interesting sideline. I absolutely did not see the ending coming, and it left me reeling - so much so that it has eclipsed all of my thoughts about the rest of the book and I don’t really have anything insightful to say, other than I would have loved to see various characters’ reactions to the fallout from the ending, particularly Isma. Had I realised that this is a retelling of the Antigone myth, I might have been less surprised by the developments. A devastating exploration of identity, belonging, family legacies and the long-arm of extremism set in a British Muslim community.