This novel is a modern day updating and transfiguration of the ancient Greek drama Antigone by Sophocles. The story itself, however, can be fully appreciated and enjoyed without the least bit of knowledge concerning its origination point.
Isma Pasha is a British citizen who also happens to be a Muslim. Thus, when she is detained at London’s Heathrow Airport for interrogation, there is a dual level of concern and conflict. It not merely coincidental that she dresses and looks the part of a Muslim woman on the verge of turning 30 rather than a typical British woman of the 21st century. It is only after confirming that Isma herself considers herself first a British citizen and second a member of Islam that she is allowed to catch her flight to Boston where she is moving closer to earning a doctorate in sociology.
While in the USA, she meets a fellow Londoner named Eamonn Lone who is also Islamic. He is the son of England’s equivalent of Secretary of State, Karamat Lone. Isma despise the father’s politics, but she falls hard for the son’s good looks. Upon confessing her feelings about his father, however, Eamonn takes great offense and decides to terminate what is still just a close friendship. A reconciliation of sorts takes place once Isma explains how Karamat cruelly turned a blind eye to the family’s request for information from Karamat about the burial location of her father. Despite the reconciliation, however, Eamonn leaves her to go back to London.
It is while back home that Eamonn has a chance encounter with Isma’s sister, Aneeka. This time it is his turn to fall hard, and the relationship does not remain platonic. She is quite careful not speak too much about a third sibling, the brother to Isma and Aneeka, named Parvaiz. Realizing who Eamonn’s powerful father is, Aneeka chooses the wiser path of avoiding the subject of her brother who has recently been indoctrinated and recruited by the extremist Islamic group ISIS.
It was through the infamous propaganda arm of ISIS that Parvaiz—a wannabe filmmaker—enters into the dark and violent world of ISIS, becoming not a foot soldier, but working within the media arm of the organization. It does not take long for even this to take a toll on his conscience, however, and before long he is actively pursuing a desire to return home to England from Syria. Reaching out to Aneeka for assistance, an arrangement is made for a rendezvous in Istanbul, but while there he makes a run for the British consulate in a desperate effort to get a new passport by informing them of his complete change of heart. Upon leaving the consulate, he is shot by a fellow member of ISIS.
The normal course of events would have Parvaiz’s corpse returned home for burial as a citizen of England, but Karamat Lone uses his position as Home Secretary to strip him posthumously of his citizenship and to deny all requests for repatriation. This action seems to finally open Eamonn’s eyes to the brutal truth about his father, and he soon joins Aneeka in her public displays of outrage against his father for this decision. When he flies to Pakistan to join Aneeka in her protests, he is assaulted by two men who attach a suicide bomb around him. As everyone around him begins to flee, Aneeka begins rushing toward Eamonn despite his entreaties for her to stop. She reaches him and they embrace as the story concludes uncertainly on a freeze frame of two lovers holding each other close beneath an ancient tree in a sunny park.
