Impunity

From the Women’s Prize for Fiction-winning author of Home Fire comes a sharp fable of privilege, family secrets and the prices we pay for loyalty

'A searing, immaculately written novel about family, power, accountability and the loss of innocence' LOUISE KENNEDY

'This is Shamsie's masterpiece' KIRAN DESAI

Nyla’s family is powerful, admired, influential: the toast, in her eyes, of 1970s Karachi. The man responsible for their continued success is her revered Uncle, a man obsessed with order and art, status and politics. Then a girl appears in her garden — a girl very close to her age, with a name not unlike her own. This brief, thrilling encounter will fracture Nyla’s understanding of the world her Uncle has painted, and set her on a dangerous path.

Over the next years, as she comes of age in a country tipping into political unrest, Nyla will realise that attempting to unpick the past, she is playing a dangerous game in the present — a game her Uncle has been playing for far longer than she has.

A gripping family drama, Impunity is a modern masterpiece, exploring the price of freedom in a family whose rotten roots run deep.