Best of Friends

Following the LJ best-booked, Women’s Prize–winning Home Fire, Shamsie’s latest examines ingrained societal standards, peer pressure, and the nature of friendship, opening in Pakistan and ending in the UK. Zahra Ali and Maryam Khan have been close friends since childhood in Karachi, having successfully bridged differences in their backgrounds and their attitudes toward life. When they are teenagers, they share a disturbing experience one night with two young men that has a powerful effect on their lives. For Maryam, there is no forgiving and forgetting, even many years later when the two women are leading successful lives in London, Zahra as head of the Center for Civil Liberties and Maryam as a venture capitalist supporting the tech industry. For Maryam, finally, her only recourse is revenge, and her unfolding story explores contemporary issues from civil rights to the deportation of migrants.