-
review
Dan Stevens
was born in Croydon and educated at Tonbridge School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where he read English Literature. In his final term at Cambridge, Sir Peter Hall cast him in the role of Orlando in As You Like It, and the production went on to wow Broadway and Los Angeles, earning Dan a nomination for an Ian Charleson Award. Dan is perhaps best known for his lead performance as Nick Guest in the BBC’s adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s Booker Prize-winning novel The Line of Beauty. He was last seen on screen as Edward Ferrars in the BBC adaptation of Sense and Sensibility. Dan recently starred in Tom Stoppard and André Previn’s Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at The National Theatre. He is frequently heard on Radio 4 and is also the narrator of several audiobooks, including The Outcast by Sadie Jones (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2008).
From 27th May, Dan will be performing the lead role of Septimus in Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia at The Duke of York’s Theatre, directed by David Leveaux.
back to
celebrity reviews -
Burnt Shadows
Kamila ShamsieReviewed by Dan Stevens
Spanning five decades and traversing three continents, Burnt Shadows holds several major geopolitical crises in its narrative clasp. Beginning in Nagasaki in 1945, the story not only bears witness to the partition of India and Pakistan in 1948, the Soviet war in Afghanistan of the 80s, but also the catastrophes of our young century, September 11th and the nascent (now ravaging) War on Terror.
The sheer power of Shamsie’s central character, Hiroko, enables her to encompass such astonishing breadth. Hiroko is paradoxically both hapless victim of scarring circumstance but also the epicentre of a spider’s web of relationships the reach of which spreads beyond the historical and transcends the accidence of nationality. The plot deftly folds history in on itself as Hiroko finally finds herself drawn to the very country that bombed her to begin with. Her son Raza, feeling both Pakistani and yet Western, walks the troubled line between the two worlds. Shamsie seems acutely aware that although the effects of a nuclear blast may be black and white, history rarely is; indeed everything in between is full of colour.
Once in New York, Hiroko’s old friend Ilse tells her, ‘Both times you have entered my home it’s been nuclear related. Once was acceptable: twice just seems like lazy plotting.’ It is to Shamsie’s credit that, although there are times when the credibility of the narrative feels pushed to breaking point, the strength of her characters and the overpowering embrace of her style means that a line like this only bolsters the ironic depth of her characters and serves to prove that history has always been stranger than fiction.
With beautiful, engaging prose Shamsie leads us out of boxed, conventional thinking and into a realm of multi-lingual thought – ‘reading the world in five languages’. It seems that with Hiroko’s story Shamsie can unite across the divides disparate elements to present a single heart’s global vision. Despite war feeling for some like it is ‘the interruption, not the end of the story’, Burnt Shadows demonstrates how stories are inevitable, that humanity is a constant even in a world that defies belief, that compassion will always win out despite the most grotesque contrivances of war and diplomacy.
Raza says at one point, ‘I want words in every language […] I think I would be happy living in a cold, bare room if I could just spend my days burrowing into new languages.’
It is a certainty that Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows will stake its ground in many a language given the multicultural nature of the narrative and the overwhelming humanity that strikes such a pure chord throughout. I am certain, too, that no room will be left cold and bare with the addition of this powerful book.
