CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN; OBSERVER; DAILY MAIL AND FINANCIAL TIMES A dazzling new novel of friendship; identity and the unknowability of other people - from the international bestselling author of Home Fire; winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends; despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business; while Zahra keeps her desires secret; and dreams of escaping abroad. This year; 1988; anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan; emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman; Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls' childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine. Three decades later; in London; Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world; both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition. Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today; about power and how we use it; and about what we owe to those who've loved us the longest. 'A new Kamila Shamsie novel is always worth celebrating; but Best of Friends is something else: an epic story that explores the ties of childhood friendship; the possibility of escape; the way the political world intrudes into the personal; all through the lens of two sharply drawn protagonists' Observer; Books of the Year 2022