Burnt Shadows

An Orange Prize Finalist

Beginning on August 9, 1945, in Nagasaki, and ending in a prison cell in the US in 2002, as a man is waiting to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of love and betrayal.

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic 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, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the 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 these families together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.

Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi. She has studied and taught in the United States. Two of her previous novels, Kartography and Broken Verses, have won awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She writes for The Guardian (UK) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC. Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize Winner for Fiction

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic 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, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history—personal and political—are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the 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 these families together over decades and generations are tested by wars and disasters, with unforeseeable consequences.

"Shamsie stitches together a sweeping saga that begins with a young Japanese woman in wartime Nagasaki and ends, more than half a century later, with a Pakistani prisoner about to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The tale unfolds through the lives of two unusually multinational (and multilingual) families: the Weiss-Burtons (German, British and American) and the Ashraf-Tanakas (Indian/Pakistani and Japanese). Not counting minor detours, their triumphs and tragedies span five countries and, without giving too much away, at least three world-changing historical events. On the face of it, collapsing so broad a canvas in a relatively slender novel is a recipe for chaos worthy of a subcontinental urban planner. But in Ms. Shamsie's self-assured hands this does not come to pass. The story line remains taut, the characters vividly etched. Even the implausible romance at the heart of the novel—between Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and Sajjad Ashraf, a young aesthete forced to emigrate from Delhi to Karachi in the wake of the 1947 partition of British India—is somehow rendered believable. Ms. Shamsie is . . . as a cartographer of culture. She notes, for instance, that in Indo-Muslim society the emotional terrain of mourning is often communal rather than personal; Urdu contains no phrase for leaving a person alone with his grief. The siren call of modernity—with its implicit privileging of the nuclear family over the extended clan—can be deeply disturbing. As the matriarch of the undivided Ashraf family in pre-partition Delhi declares archly, 'maa-dern' is a word 'created only to cut you off from your people and your past.' Sajjad's failure to try sushi after 35 years with Hiroko tells you all you need to know about the persistence of inherited attitudes that span everything from the loyalty of taste buds to the mental geography of marriage. In the end, for all its insights into the cultural and familial, this is above all a political novel. The choice of a Japanese protagonist allows the author to question much of the received wisdom of what used to be called the War on Terror. As a young teacher in Nagasaki, Hiroko has known adolescent boys as eager to embrace the cult of martyrdom as any young mujahideen. In General Zia's concerted effort to drag Islam out of the home and into the public square, she sees the echo of Japanese emperor worship. The implication of these observations, of course, is that criticism of Islam is unwarranted. Not that long ago it was followers of Shintoism who were turning aircraft into missiles while dreaming of immortality . . . A cleverly constructed and powerfully imagined novel. Ultimately, as with any work of the imagination, the color of the politics matters much less than the quality of the prose."—The Wall Street Journal Online, Asia edition

“Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the worlds many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. Burnt Shadows is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response.”—Salman Rushdie

“Burnt Shadows is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the authors intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions.”—Anita Desai

“In this brilliant book Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through—pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through—the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beautys lair.”—Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

“Burnt Shadows is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that Ive (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have traveled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come.”—Tahmima Anam, author of The Golden Age

"An epic tale of two families whose lives are intertwined by conflict. As a young woman, Hiroko Tanaka survives the bombing of Nagasaki, which takes the life of her first love, German-born Konrad Weiss. Physically and mentally scarred, Hiroko flees to Konrad's sister Elizabeth, who lives with her English husband James Burton in Delhi. Sajjad Ashraf, who frequents the Burton household, gives Urdu lessons to Hiroko, and they fall in love. But arranged marriages are traditional in his Muslim family, so the couple elopes and flees to Istanbul. Later, after Partition ends Sajjad's hopes of returning to Delhi, they move to Karachi. There Hiroko bears a son, Raza, who grows into a precocious youth with a passion for languages. With the appearance at their door of James and Elizabeth's son Harry, the lines of the two families cross once more. Raza flubs a final exam and deviates from his college-bound path to befriend a young Afghani smuggler, with whom he attempts to join the mujahideen. Shamsie builds vivid contemporary scenes on a rich and sometimes sordid history; the modern characters' struggles attain tragic, even mythic resonance as parents' ordeals are visited on their children. Wit, formidable imagination and intricate, well-worked characterizations distinguish the twisty narrative. Raza experiences mixed emotions as he travels through the blasted hinterlands with Afghani arms smugglers. In a world fraught with duplicity and inside deals among militant tribesmen, military contractors and CIA operatives, he learns that morality is anything but straightforward. But the struggles of zealots and mercenaries are dwarfed by Hiroko's titanic journey. Having survived and suffered so much, she finds herself sitting with a crossword puzzle in a West Village bistro, contemplating the grand and hellish pattern of her loved ones' lives as she considers with horror the threat of nuclear proliferation between India and Pakistan. With a rare combination of skill and sensitivity, Shamsie generates pathos for outsiders and the displaced."—Kirkus Reviews

"An engrossing story of resilience and humanity in the face of crushing tragedy, Shamsie's fifth novel follows the interconnected lives of two families brought together in Nagasaki near the end of World War II. Their fates are linked for 60 years through several countries and ultimately to a somewhat paranoid New York following 9/11. The allusion to recent historical events is not simply an overt device on which to hang a particular political viewpoint; these events are integral to the personal narratives presented here. Shamsie explores the meanings of cultural identity through characters who endure sacrifice, betrayal, and human-made disaster as they live and work in countries foreign to them. This critically acclaimed Pakistani author, who writes in English, is a powerful storyteller who deserves a wider U.S. audience. Readers who appreciate the cross-cultural scope and insight into global tensions in the works of Khaled Hosseini and Salman Rushdie will thoroughly enjoy this novel. Highly recommended."—Gwen Vredevoogd, Library Journal

"Shamsie takes readers on a tour de force in this examination of the impact of war, following a trajectory from the devastation of Nagasaki in WWII through the conflict-ridden formation of Pakistan in the late 1940s to post-9/11 Manhattan and war-torn Afghanistan. Konrad Weiss, living in Nagasaki in the summer of 1945, hires a local woman, Hiroko Tanaka, to help him write a book about the city. The romance that blossoms is cut short when the atom bomb falls, killing Konrad, and after a while, Hiroko, feeling she can no longer stay in her country, travels to India to find Konrads sister, Ilse, the wife of a British lawyer enjoying the privileges of the British rajs final days. From there, Shamsie brilliantly interweaves the lives of an array of characters as she brings the story forward to the 1980s, then to the beginning of the 21st century, exploring the clashes between loyalty to family, homeland and cause. Shamsies unsparing look at how individuals respond when war affects their world makes for an intriguing, heartrending tale of human connection."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

August 9, 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 realization. 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, Hiroko 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 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.

Kamila Shamsie's Burnt Shadows is a story for our time by a writer of immense ambition and strength. . . . This is an absorbing novel that commands in the reader a powerful emotional and intellectual response -Salman Rushdie.

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
An Orange Prize Finalist

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her lover from the veranda as he leaves. Sunlight streams across Urakami Valley, and then the world goes white.

In the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan in search of new beginnings. From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow the entire world over. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events.

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic 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, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history — personal and political — are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the 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 these families together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences.

An Orange Prize Finalist

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her lover from the veranda as he leaves. Sunlight streams across Urakami Valley, and then the world goes white.

In the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan in search of new beginnings. From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow the entire world over. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events. Burnt Shadows is a story for our time by a writer of immense ambition and strength. . . . This is an absorbing novel that commands in the reader a powerful emotional and intellectual response (Salman Rushdie).

Kamila Shamsie was born in 1973 in Karachi. She has studied and taught in the United States. Two of her previous novels, Kartography and Broken Verses, have won awards from Pakistan's Academy of Letters. She writes for The Guardian (UK) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC. Anisfield-Wolf Book Prize Winner for Fiction

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction

Hiroko Tanaka is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. As she steps onto her veranda, wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, her world is suddenly and irrevocably altered. In the numbing aftermath of the atomic 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, two years later, Hiroko travels to Delhi. It is there that her life will become intertwined with that of Konrad's half sister, Elizabeth, her husband, James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu.

With the partition of India, and the creation of Pakistan, Hiroko will find herself displaced once again, in a world where old wars are replaced by new conflicts. But the shadows of history--personal and political--are cast over the interrelated worlds of the Burtons, the 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 these families together over decades and generations are tested by wars and disasters, with unforeseeable consequences.

Shamsie stitches together a sweeping saga that begins with a young Japanese woman in wartime Nagasaki and ends, more than half a century later, with a Pakistani prisoner about to be shipped to Guantanamo Bay. The tale unfolds through the lives of two unusually multinational (and multilingual) families: the Weiss-Burtons (German, British and American) and the Ashraf-Tanakas (Indian/Pakistani and Japanese). Not counting minor detours, their triumphs and tragedies span five countries and, without giving too much away, at least three world-changing historical events. On the face of it, collapsing so broad a canvas in a relatively slender novel is a recipe for chaos worthy of a subcontinental urban planner. But in Ms. Shamsie's self-assured hands this does not come to pass. The story line remains taut, the characters vividly etched. Even the implausible romance at the heart of the novel--between Hiroko Tanaka, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and Sajjad Ashraf, a young aesthete forced to emigrate from Delhi to Karachi in the wake of the 1947 partition of British India--is somehow rendered believable. Ms. Shamsie is . . . as a cartographer of culture. She notes, for instance, that in Indo-Muslim society the emotional terrain of mourning is often communal rather than personal; Urdu contains no phrase for leaving a person alone with his grief. The siren call of modernity--with its implicit privileging of the nuclear family over the extended clan--can be deeply disturbing. As the matriarch of the undivided Ashraf family in pre-partition Delhi declares archly, 'maa-dern' is a word 'created only to cut you off from your people and your past.' Sajjad's failure to try sushi after 35 years with Hiroko tells you all you need to know about the persistence of inherited attitudes that span everything from the loyalty of taste buds to the mental geography of marriage. In the end, for all its insights into the cultural and familial, this is above all a political novel. The choice of a Japanese protagonist allows the author to question much of the received wisdom of what used to be called the War on Terror. As a young teacher in Nagasaki, Hiroko has known adolescent boys as eager to embrace the cult of martyrdom as any young mujahideen. In General Zia's concerted effort to drag Islam out of the home and into the public square, she sees the echo of Japanese emperor worship. The implication of these observations, of course, is that criticism of Islam is unwarranted. Not that long ago it was followers of Shintoism who were turning aircraft into missiles while dreaming of immortality . . . A cleverly constructed and powerfully imagined novel. Ultimately, as with any work of the imagination, the color of the politics matters much less than the quality of the prose.--The Wall Street Journal Online, Asia edition

Kamila Shamsie is a writer of immense ambition and strength. She understands a great deal about the ways in which the world's many tragedies and histories shape one another, and about how human beings can try to avoid being crushed by their fate and can discover their humanity, even in the fiercest combat zones of the age. Burnt Shadows is an absorbing novel that commands, in the reader, a powerful emotional and intellectual response.--Salman Rushdie

Burnt Shadows is audacious in its ambition, epic in its scope. A startling expansion of the author's intentions, imagination and craftsmanship. One can only admire the huge advances she has made, and helped us to make, in understanding the new global tensions.--Anita Desai

In this brilliant book Kamila Shamsie opens a vista onto the century we have just lived through--pointing out its terror and its solace. She is so extraordinary a writer that she also offers hints about the century we are living through--the dark corners that contain challenges, as well as the paths that lead to beauty's lair.--Nadeem Aslam, author of Maps for Lost Lovers

Burnt Shadows is a beautiful, beautiful book. I was entirely swept up in the story, and I feel, now that I've (so reluctantly) put it down, that I have traveled the world and spent the past six decades with Hiroko and her family. The book speaks boldly and powerfully of our age; I know it will stay with me for a long time to come.--Tahmima Anam, author of The Golden Age

An epic tale of two families whose lives are intertwined by conflict. As a young woman, Hiroko Tanaka survives the bombing of Nagasaki, which takes the life of her first love, German-born Konrad Weiss. Physically and mentally scarred, Hiroko flees to Konrad's sister Elizabeth, who lives with her English husband James Burton in Delhi. Sajjad Ashraf, who frequents the Burton household, gives Urdu lessons to Hiroko, and they fall in love. But arranged marriages are traditional in his Muslim family, so the couple elopes and flees to Istanbul. Later, after Partition ends Sajjad's hopes of returning to Delhi, they move to Karachi. There Hiroko bears a son, Raza, who grows into a precocious youth with a passion for languages. With the appearance at their door of James and Elizabeth's son Harry, the lines of the two families cross once more. Raza flubs a final exam and deviates from his college-bound path to befriend a young Afghani smuggler, with whom he attempts to join the mujahideen. Shamsie builds vivid contemporary scenes on a rich and sometimes sordid history; the modern characters' struggles attain tragic, even mythic resonance as parents' ordeals are visited on their children. Wit, formidable imagination and intricate, well-worked characterizations distinguish the twisty narrative. Raza experiences mixed emotions as he travels through the blasted hinterlands with Afghani arms smugglers. In a world fraught with duplicity and inside deals among militant tribesmen, military contractors and CIA operatives, he learns that morality is anything but straightforward. But the struggles of zealots and mercenaries are dwarfed by Hiroko's titanic journey. Having survived and suffered so much, she finds herself sitting with a crossword puzzle in a West Village bistro, contemplating the grand and hellish pattern of her loved ones' lives as she considers with horror the threat of nuclear proliferation between India and Pakistan. With a rare combination of skill and sensitivity, Shamsie generates pathos for outsiders and the displaced.--Kirkus Reviews

An engrossing story of resilience and humanity in the face of crushing tragedy, Shamsie's fifth novel follows the interconnected lives of two families brought together in Nagasaki near the end of World War II. Their fates are linked for 60 years through several countries and ultimately to a somewhat paranoid New York following 9/11. The allusion to recent historical events is not simply an overt device on which to hang a particular political viewpoint; these events are integral to the personal narratives presented here. Shamsie explores the meanings of cultural identity through characters who endure sacrifice, betrayal, and human-made disaster as they live and work in countries foreign to them. This critically acclaimed Pakistani author, who writes in English, is a powerful storyteller who deserves a wider U.S. audience. Readers who appreciate the cross-cultural scope and insight into global tensions in the works of Khaled Hossein

Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

An Orange Prize Finalist

Nagasaki, August 9, 1945. Hiroko Tanaka watches her lover from the veranda as he leaves. Sunlight streams across Urakami Valley, and then the world goes white.

In the devastating aftermath of the atomic bomb, Hiroko leaves Japan in search of new beginnings. From Delhi, amid India's cry for independence from British colonial rule, to New York City in the immediate wake of 9/11, to the novel's astonishing climax in Afghanistan, a violent history casts its shadow the entire world over. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerizing in its evocation of time and place, this is a tale of love and war, of three generations, and three world-changing historic events. Burnt Shadows is a story for our time by "a writer of immense ambition and strength. . . . This is an absorbing novel that commands in the reader a powerful emotional and intellectual response" (Salman Rushdie).

KAMILA SHAMSIE was born in 1973 in Karachi. She has studied and taught in the USA. Two of her previous novels, Kartography and Broken Verses, have won awards from Pakistan's Academey of Letters. She writes for The Guardian (UK) and frequently broadcasts on the BBC.

Discussion Questions

1. Early in the novel, Hiroko observes that during the World War II everything has been "distilled or distorted into its most functional form," including a vegetable patch where once Azaleas grew, and she asks, "What prompted this falling-off of love?" Can you find other places in the novel where this idea is expressed? Is there a similarity between the garden and a suicide bomber?

2. How does Hiroko resist being simply Hibakusha, a victim of the bomb, and in what ways is she powerless to change this perception of her? Consider also how it affects her son, Raza. Is it impossible to escape certain legacies?

3. Discuss the different reasons that Konrad, Elizabeth, Sajjad and Harry leave their home in India, and why Hiroko leaves Japan, and then Pakistan. What does it mean to have a home, and to be displaced? How is it different when you dont have a choice to stay? Ultimately, do the characters ever have a country to call their own?

4. Hiroko is immovable in her opinion about the atomic bomb. What does it mean to have a direct and highly personal connection to an earth-changing event like the bombing of Nakasaki, or 9/11? Is it possible for anyone so directly affected by the violence of these events to regard them with historic perspective? How are Kim and Hiroko different from one another in this regard? Consider their conversation about Nagasaki on pgs 294 to295.

5. The characters in Burnt Shadows sometimes find that their ideological beliefs can be vanquished by basic human feelings of love and hate. And sometimes the reverse happens as well. Why are individuals so often in conflict with their ideals, and how does the novel illustrate this conflict?

6. What does Sajjad mean when he says on pg 52 that he wants a "modern wife"? How do the women in Burnt Shadows each express their independence? And in what ways are they still captive to tradition?

7. Why does Elizabeth at first resist Sajjad and Hirokos affection for one another? Is she just trying to be practical? What is the nature of her resentment and concern?

8. Hiroko, Sajjad, and Raza each have a love of languages. What does it mean to learn another language, and why are languages (and their translation back and forth) important to these characters?

9. Discuss the reasons that Abdullah joins a mujahideen training camp. Why is it tempting to Raza as well? What social pressures and conditions do you think could inspire you to take up arms in a similar fashion, or to become radicalized?

10. Shortly after Sajjad tells Hiroko that "everything about you is beautiful," Elizabeth Burton, reflecting upon the Himalayas, thinks "what a pity beauty could be so meaningless." What does this novel, which begins with the scarring of a womans back, have to say about beauty and truth?

11. Who, if anyone, is to blame for the death of Sajjad?

12. Is it irresponsible for Harry to send Raza to Afghanistan, given that he had promised Hiroko to keep him safe? Discuss his reasons for sending him, and Razas reasons for going.

13. Steve is highly suspicious of Razas past, in particular his early brush with the mujahideen. While Raza is, in truth, largely motivated by personal loyalties, is Steve nonetheless right to be suspicious of him? Is Steves paranoia a widespread phenomenon in the United States? Globally?

14. The forces of oppression and liberation course through this novel - from the Raj, to the partition of India, to fundamentalist Islams control of women in Pakistan, to the Patriot Act. Is Burnt Shadows asking what it means to liberate ones self, to be free both personally and politically? Is there a difference? Consider, as well, Elizabeths flight from her husband, and her life in New York.

15. Discuss Kim Burtons actions at the Canadian border. Would you have done the same thing? How does this act illustrate the larger themes of the novel?