State Of Mind

While researching IS for her latest novel, Kamila Shamsie feared she might be mistaken for a security threat

In January 2014, three months after I became a British citizen, the then Home Secretary Theresa May announced a scheme, backed by the Lib Dems, to strip foreign-born British citizens of their citizenship if they are judged to pose a threat to national security. With my own passport still so fresh in my hands, I realised that all Britons were not equal. Some of us were citizens and others—the foreign-born—were citizens with conditions. I had spent six years being naturalised, and the changes in the laws felt very personal. It was hardly surprising, then, that this issue found its way into my novel, Home Fire, which includes a young British- Pakistani man whose citizenship is revoked once he becomes a target for an Islamic State recruiter.