Her decision to follow the 'logic of the nation' and turn in Abdullah goes against the pattern of behavior that the characters before her followed in the novel. This is perhaps why the end of the novel, when Kim's nationalistic impulses obscure her perception of Abdullah, is so devastating. Through all of this, these characters choose to see each other as individuals rather than as spokespeople for their nationality or class. She then decides to help Abdullah, an Afghan on the run from the FBI, because she intuits that he has a good character. In New York, Hiroko befriends several taxi drivers, including Omar. Hiroko and Sajjad fall in love despite these differences their son, Raza, forms a close relationship with the Burtons' son, Harry. Later, the Burtons develop a decades-long friendship with Hiroko despite their different national, cultural, and political backgrounds. Hiroko and Konrad, from the very beginning of the novel, for example, fall in love despite the strict social regimentation and public suspicion towards foreigners in wartime Japan. Where love and friendship are possible-and they are possible in the most unlikely places and combinations-then you have the opposite of an attitude of separateness which says 'I'll accept your suffering because it's in my own self-interest.''Īs the characters in Burnt Shadows live within their own particular political contexts, they forge connections across vastly different terrains of national and personal identity. At the level of individual human interaction, of course, there's a different logic afoot. Shamsie: 'Too many people think I'm making a particular comment on America, but really I'm talking about nations in wartime and the particular inhuman logic they start to follow when they decide what is an acceptable price for some other nation's people to pay. Shamsie discusses this with Harleen Singh in a 2011 interview for Ariel Journal.

The Logic of the Nation vs the Logic of the Individual is perhaps the largest theme in Burnt Shadows. Buy Study Guide The Logic of the Nation vs the Logic of the Individual

Burnt Shadows by Kamila Shamsie