ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a feminist interpretation of cosmopolitanism in Shamsie’s Home Fire, putting forward that the term “cosmopolitanism” includes advocacy of global justice and human rights, issues that have been equally integral to contemporary feminism. Aneeka, a modern-day Antigone, seen through Shamsie’s “cosmopolitan feminist” lens, challenges the revocation of British citizenship by the state when her brother’s body is denied burial in England and sent to Pakistan. The novel, focusing on the interrelated issues of state and citizenship, human rights and civil liberties, law and justice, and terrorism and Islamophobia, suggests the ways in which the war on terrorism has failed to examine the root causes of terrorism or provide a tangible solution to the global predicament. The novel further emphasizes that it is necessary to recognize the complicit ways in which factors of class, race, religion, and gender differences impact and underpin cosmopolitan feminism.
