The author discusses her new novel, "Best of Friends," a story of lifelong friendship and the forces that bring it to the breaking point, with writer and Princeton professor emeritus Michael Wood.
About the book:
Zahra and Maryam have been best friends since childhood in Karachi, even though — or maybe because — they are unlike in nearly every way. Yet they never speak of the differences in their backgrounds or their values, not even after the fateful night when a moment of adolescent impulse upends their plans for the future. Three decades later, Zahra and Maryam have grown into powerful women who have each cut a distinctive path through London. But when two troubling figures from their past resurface, they must finally confront their bedrock differences — and find out whether their friendship can survive.
Kamila Shamsie is the author of eight novels, which have been translated into over 30 languages. "Home Fire" won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and the Hellenic Prize, was long listed for the Man Booker Prize (all UK); "Burnt Shadows" won the Premio Boccaccio (Italy) and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (UK); "A God in Every Stone" won the Anisfield-Wolf Award (USA) and was shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction (UK) and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature (India). A Vice-President of the Royal Society of Literature and Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Manchester, she was one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ in 2013. She grew up in Karachi, and now lives in primarily in London. She is currently the Belknap Visiting Fellow in the Humanities Council and Department of English for the Spring 2023 semester at Princeton University.
Michael Wood is professor emeritus of English and Comparative Literature at Princeton University. He has written widely on 20th century literature, film, and literary theory and is an admired cultural critic who writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He is the author of seminal books on Nabokov, Marquez, Yeats, Oracles, and much more.
Presented in partnership with Labyrinth Books and Princeton University’s English Department.