She has been awarded 2017's £10,000 London Hellenic Prize, given to the best book inspired by or relating to Greece, for Home Fire.
Shamsie claimed the award on Monday night at a ceremony in the Great Hall of Kings College London although the winner was announced on October 15.
She won the accolade of the Women’s Prize for fiction for her seventh novel, Home Fire.
‘Home Fire’ is based on an Ancient Greek Play in which a girl named Antigone is forbidden to bury Polynices, her brother, after he was declared a traitor. Shamsie’s seventh novel, Home Fire is set in the modern times that recounts the story of a family devastated by ISIS.
The story comprises of three siblings; Aneeka – the lead character, her twin sisters, Isma and Parvaiz, their younger brother – who fled to join ISIS’s media wing. Aneeka falls in love with the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, who she hopes to use in order to find her missing brother.
The chair of Judges announced ‘Home Fire’, the winner of the contest and handed Kamila Shamsie, prize money of £30,000. The jury acclaimed the novel “the story of our times.”
Shamsie, 44, was born in Karachi and is now living in London, UK. She is an acclaimed writer, who has, several times, raised her about gender inequality in the world of authors and dedicated a year to publishing only female writers to redress the inequality.
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