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दि. 9 ऑगस्ट 1945, नागासाकी. हिरोको तानाका आपल्या घराच्या ओसरीवर उभी राहून समोरचं निसर्गसौंदर्य न्याहाळण्यात गुंतलेली असते.पाठीवर तीन काळ्या बगळ्यांची नक्षी असलेला किमोनो ल्यायलेली हिरोको 21 वर्षांची आहे आणि लवकरच तिचा प्रियकर कोनरॅड वेईससोबत लग्न करणार आहे. क्षणार्धात सगळं विश्‍व शुभ्र पडद्याखाली झाकलं जातं. पुढच्या क्षणात त्यात अग्नीचा रोष उफाळून येतो घडल्या गोष्टीची कल्पना येऊ लागते. बॉम्बहल्ल्यामध्ये हिरोको तिचं सर्वस्व गमावते- उरतात फक्त तिच्या पाठीवर त्या तीन काळ्या बगळ्यांच्या भाजक्या खुणा...जणू तिला तिच्या जुन्या आयुष्याचं स्मरण करून देत राहण्यासाठी...
August 9th, 1945, Nagasaki. Hiroko Tanaka steps out onto her veranda, taking 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 , in love with the man she is to marry, Konrad Weiss. 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. There she walks into the lives of Konrad's half-sister, Elizabeth, her husband James Burton, and their employee Sajjad Ashraf, from whom she starts to learn Urdu. As the years unravel, new homes replace those left behind and old wars are seamlessly usurped by new conflicts. But the shadows of history - personal, political - are cast over the entwined worlds of the Burtons, Ashraf’s and the Tanakas as they are transported from Pakistan to New York, and in the novel's astonishing climax, to Afghanistan in the immediate wake of 9/11. The ties that have bound them together over decades and generations are tested to the extreme, with unforeseeable consequences. Sweeping in its scope and mesmerising in its evocation of time and place, Burnt Shadows is an epic narrative of disasters evaded and confronted, loyalties offered and repaid, and loves rewarded and betrayed.
