Stand out read, the best of my recent reading, so so good. Such a dreadful cover does nothing for what a great book this is. Long listed for the 2018 Man Booker prize, this is modern day reworking of the Greek myth of Antigone, which I read a summary of on-line before starting this. Just so I knew what I was dealing with! Unlike many other Booker nominees/prize winners, this is not a literary monster, too clever for its own good. Isma, her younger twin siblings Aneeka and Parvaiz are London born of Pakistani descent. Both parents are dead, the shadow of their father who disappeared on his way to Guantanamo Bay always over them. Isma is smart, having won a scholarship to a US university where she meets a young man Eammon, mixed English/Pakistan. Eammon's father is the Home Secretary in the government, barely treading the tenuous path between his Pakistani roots and his Englishness. The disappearance of Parvaiz to the ISIS cause in Syria and Eammon's return to London with a parcel for Aneeka throws these two together, Aneeka seeing a way to bring her brother home. Forces greater than the lovers gradually build, the reader, with the story of Antigone in mind, knowing that this will not be a happy ending. Outstanding story, the tragedy of modern day politics no different from what it was in the days of Ancient Greece.
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