Burnt Shadows plunges the reader into a vibrant world of colour and culture, depicting an unspoiled country of blue skies, purple notebooks hidden in trees, and blossoming love, pure in its fragility – only to snatch these fleeting pages of peace from the reader’s grasp and in an instant, dissolve all colour and life. Everything that was once known is lost; a world of colour transformed into alien white.
“There was something she learnt to recognise after Nagasaki, after Partition: those who could step out from loss, and those who would remain mired in it.”
This is a story of love and devotion and the prevailing strength of the protagonist Hiroko. After the loss of Konrad, her fiancé, and her father in the attack on Nagasaki, Hiroko leaves her now unrecognisable home for the bustling world of colonial Delhi. Finding there Konrad’s relatives, a bond is created which binds his family and hers throughout the decades which the novel captures.
As a stranger moving between different lands, Hiroko attempts to counter her dislocation from the unknown through her gift with language. The reader similarly experiences this sense of displacement as they are transported through the narrative, suddenly finding themselves fast-forwarded years in the future.
This disorientating technique allows for not only the novel to span over five decades of turbulent history, but also provides a physical experience for the reader where the familiar becomes foreign.
Burnt Shadows captures the tides of history, transporting the reader with Hiroko through changing landscapes and ideals, as she dreams of escaping the shadow of Nagasaki and the physical bird-like scars she carries with her.
The prologue poignantly asks, “How did it come to this?”, paving the way for a dramatic narrative which tries to answer this question, and in doing so, reveals Hiroko’s quiet endurance and the entwining of beauty and horror in her world.
This novel doesn’t lend itself easily to summaries; it is best left explored by the reader on their own. Beautifully written, exhilarating and at times exhausting, this is a novel which allows you to disappear into a world far removed from your own. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Eleanor Beeton
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