KAMILA SHAMSIE is the author of several previous novels, including In the City by the Sea, Salt and Saffron, Kartography, Burnt Shadows, and most recently Best of Friends and Home Fire, which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, was longlisted for the Booker Prize, and was a finalist for the International Dublin Literary Award, the Costa Novel Award, and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, among other honors. She has been nominated for and won several other awards, including the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Prime Minister's Award for Literature in Pakistan, the Patras Bokhari Award, the Walter Scott Prize, and more. She was a 2011 elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and in 2013 was included in the Granta list of Best Young British Writers. She was raised in Karachi and lives in London.