New-age Sophocles

Kamila Shamsie's new novel, Home Fire, is a bold retelling of Sophocles' Antigone

Kamila Shamsie’s new novel, longlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize, is a bold retelling of Sophocles’ Antigone. Its epigram (“The ones we love … are enemies of the state”) is from Seamus Heaney’s 2004 translation and reworking of the play. The novel begins with an airport interrogation.

A Londoner of Pakistani descent, Isma, has a student visa and is flying to study sociology at Amherst College. Because she’s Muslim and wears a hijab, she knows to expect delays and perhaps worse at security.

Dark wit plays beneath her trepidation. She has prepped for this moment with her sister. If you’re asked