As she grew up in her native Pakistan, novelist Kamila Shamsie took citizenship for granted.
"Citizenship is assumed in the way I'm left handed," said Shamsie, author of "Home Fire," one of 13 novels nominated for this year's Man Booker Prize, which will be announced in October.
A novel about bigotry, love, nationalism and politics, "Home Fire" revolves around the lives of two Muslim sisters, Isma and Aneeka, and their brother, Pervaiz, who has left England for the Syrian city of Raqqa.
The story begins in an airport where Isma, who plans to study at the University of Massachusetts, is interrogated for two hours about her thoughts on "Shias, homosexuals, the Queen, democracy, 'The Great British Bake Off,' the invasion of Iraq, Israel, suicide bombers, dating websites."
Shamsie is a veteran of answering officials' questions and filling out forms. As a child, she often spent summer holidays in London with her parents. As an adult, she came to love the British capital. She moved to London in 2007 and finally obtained British citizenship and a passport in 2013.
"When you become a citizen of a country, there's a whole process you have to go through," she said during a telephone interview.
A translation of "Antigone" by Anne Carson, the highly regarded contemporary poet, inspired her while she wrote the novel.
"The Anne Carson one is very spare and bare bones," Shamsie said.
More inspiration for "Home Fire" came in an email from Jatinder Verma, founder of Tara Arts, a 40-year-old theater company in London. Verma told Shamsie that he liked her novels, especially the way she wrote dialogue. He suggested that she adapt a play.
"Home Fire" forces readers to confront the question of how human beings deal with people from different cultures and faiths. For much of America's history, the primary "other" has been African-Americans.
"Now that other is Muslims," Shamsie said. "Since 9/11, there has been very nasty rhetoric and not just rhetoric. You had Guantanamo. You had racial profiling. You had a Muslim registry. My male Pakistani friends who had been living here and working here as students and in the process of becoming citizens all had to go and register because they were part of this Muslim majority country."
