Scala Radio Book Club: Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie
From the international bestselling author of Home Fire
In the Scala Radio Book Club this week (Thursday 29th September), Mark Forrest chatted to writer Kamila Shamsie about her brand-new novel Best of Friends.
From the international bestselling author of Home Fire, Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those who've loved us the longest.
Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business; while Zahra keeps her desires secret, and dreams of escaping abroad.
This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls' childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.
Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition.
Mark began the interview by asking, ‘When we begin it's the summer of 1988, and Pakistan's leader dies suddenly. What has happened and why was this important to the lives of Maryam and Zahra?’
‘So, Maryam and Zahra, they’re fourteen years old, and they have spent their entire lives for as long as they can remember under one military ruler,’ said Kamila. ‘They’ve only lived in a surveillance state, with fear, and a great sense of distance from the government. When Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq is killed in a plane explosion, at first, they just assume there will be another military dictator. But then people start to talk about democracy, and it becomes clear that when these elections go ahead, a 35-year-old woman, Benazir Bhutto, could end up being the new Prime Minister. This makes the girls think, anything is possible for them.’
Mark asked, ‘When we next meet Zahra and Maryam decades down the line in London, they’re both very successful, but living very different lives. What is going on with the friendship between these two characters?’
‘Well in one sense they’re quite close in as much as they’re both living in North London, and they’re both very successful, and so in some way, they’re leading similar lives. The main difference is that Zahra is a campaigner, and Maryam is a capitalist, and her most successful investment has been in a social media app called ‘Image’. ‘Image’ is a bit like Instagram, but its USP is that it has incredibly good facial recognition features. So, Zahra, is saying “This is surveillance. This is people being watched”, and her best friend is saying “people can opt out. They want this. It isn’t about surveillance, it’s about visibility”.
Mark then turned his attention to Kamila’s awards, ‘You won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for Home Fire, your seventh novel, which is also longlisted for the Booker Prize. I wonder when something like that happens to you, does that make the next book (this book), easier or more difficult to write?’
‘It makes it more difficult to get down to writing because you’re spending a lot of time on the road, going around talking about the last one. The actual sitting and writing a novel, however, doesn’t change. You have to shut out everything, except the novel, and then the questions become the same old questions of “Who is this character, and how do I make them breathe on the page?” So in some way, that hasn’t changed since the first book.’
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