Burnt Shadows cover art

Burnt Shadows

 Preview
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free
Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.
Prime members: New to Audible? Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Just £0.99/mo for your first 3 months of Audible.
1 bestseller or new release per month—yours to keep.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, podcasts, and Originals.
Auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.

Burnt Shadows

By: Kamila Shamsie
Narrated by: Jane McDowell
Get this deal Try Premium Plus free

£8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel monthly. Offer ends 29 January 2026 at 11:59PM GMT.

£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £15.99

Buy Now for £15.99

LIMITED TIME OFFER | £0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Premium Plus auto-renews at £8.99/mo after 3 months. Terms apply.

About this listen

 In a prison cell in the US, a man stands trembling, naked, fearfully waiting to be shipped to Guantánamo Bay. How did it come to this? he wonders.

August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka takes in the view of the terraced slopes leading up to the sky. Wrapped in a kimono with three black cranes swooping across the back, she is twenty-one and in love with the man she is to marry.

In a split second, the world turns white. In the next, it explodes with the sound of fire and the horror of realisation. In the numbing aftermath of a bomb that obliterates everything she has known, all that remains are the bird-shaped burns on her back, an indelible reminder of the world she has lost. In search of new beginnings, she travels to Delhi two years later....

©2009 Kamila Shamsie (P)2014 Audible, Inc. Contemporary Fiction Fiction Genre Fiction

Listeners also enjoyed...

 Goodnight, Vienna cover art
Fruit of the Lemon cover art
Maya Angelou: The Autobiographies cover art
The Color of Our Sky cover art
People of Heaven cover art
Song of a Captive Bird cover art
The Windrush Betrayal cover art
The Swimming Pool Library cover art
A Strangeness in My Mind cover art
Staying On cover art
Palm Trees in the Snow cover art
The Long Gaze Back cover art
All stars
Most relevant
I liked the story, but the narrator did a poor job with the accents (Urdu and Japanese sound alike), and Pakistani place names and words are mispronounced throughout. A little research would have helped. Still enjoyed the story overall though.

Good story, poor job with accents

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Much to like in this book, but ultimately I didn't find the character of Hiroko Tanaka truly three dimensional, nor credible.

I also found the narration a little hard-going with the interchange between Indian and Japanese accented English both stereo-typical and jarring.

Didn't really work for me

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
The story spans a number of countries and captures international politics and the complexities of inter-cultural and inter-generational relationships. It's a beautifully written book (beautifully read by Jan McDowell). I never wanted to it to end, and the characters have stayed with me long after.

A captivating story, beautifully read.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Kudos to Jane McDowell for her reading, excellent.

The story is one that kept me enchanted for the 12 hours I was listening to it. At times i had to pause for fear of my reaction in a public space . Highly recommended audiobook.

A book full of soul read beautifully

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
an engaging read on. an interesting and very relevant topic about what is happening now

An emgaging read

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews