The Otherness in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire
The Otherness in Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire

Summary/Abstract: Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire (2017) tells the story of British Muslims and mainly focuses on the issue of otherness of the non-Christian British citizens. Home Fire (2017) won the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction and it deals with the cultural clashes experienced by the two British families of Pakistani descent due to their otherness in the eye of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) majority in Britain. It is shown that the harder they try to be welcomed by the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) culture, the more othered they feel in the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) society. Eventually, some characters try to escape from their otherness by going beyond the borders of Britain and by becoming a global person in the contemporary interconnected global world. Thus, this study aims to explore how Kamila Shamsie defines the ‘otherness’ and the possibilities of being a global citizen in her novel, namely Home Fire (2017). Her literary works gains more importance as Rishi Sunak, who has been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party since October 2022, has been in the spotlight of media due to his religious, ethnic and cultural background. Sunak, born and bred in Britain, yet has Indian parents who migrated to Britain from East Africa in the 1960s, might also be seen as one of the millions of others living in Britain. Historically speaking, he is the first British Asian and Hindu to hold the office of prime minister in Britain. Hence, this historical event makes Kamila Shamsie’s British Muslim Pakistani fictional character named Karamat Lone, who is appointed as Home Secretary in Home Fire, more remarkable and puts a spotlight on the novel.

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