Necropolitical Trauma in Kamila Shamsie’s Fiction

Abstract

Kamila Shamsie was born in Karachi, lives in London, and has a strong affinity to the United States, having studied at Hamilton College and at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is the author of six novels, each shortlisted for a prestigious literary prize; in 2018 she won the London Hellenic Prize and the Women’s Prize for Fiction.1 Her literary career continues a family tradition of writing in Urdu and English and informs the cosmopolitan Islamicate cultures that populate her novels, imaginatively representing experiences of global and multilingual communities through intimate characterizations, historic plotlines and romantic connections.2 The trajectory of Shamsie’s novels begins with a strong interest in place and ideas of home and belonging in Pakistan. Her early novels, In the City by the Sea (1998), Salt and Saffron (2000) and Kartography (2002), are centred around Karachi.3 This is the place where identities are formed and relationships forged against the backdrop of traumatic national moments, such as Partition in 1947 and the independence of Bangladesh in 1971.4 These novels establish a cosmopolitan aesthetic that reflects her heritage and strong link to Urdu literary culture.5 Throughout her body of work, including her