Lecture by Arum Park (University of Arizona). Gilman 108

Kamila Shamsie’s Home Fire reimagines Sophocles’ Antigone as a story of a British Muslim family whose religious and ethnic alterity becomes a source of conflict within the family and without. Her adaptation both cleaves to and departs from its Sophoclean model in ways that shed light on the text of Antigone and the undercurrents of self-vs.-other that run through it. In retelling Antigone in this way, Shamsie offers us a fresh lens through which to view it, one that brings out the racial relevance of the drama and its applicability to modern conflicts. Home Fire illustrates the power of reception to illuminate old texts and expand our understanding of the intertwined relationship of race and Classics. This talk will examine passages of Sophocles’ text that Shamsie’s novelization can help us reread and rethink.