Transgenerational Trauma and the Inheritance of Memory in Kamila Shamsie’s Burnt Shadows

Abstract This paper examines the representation of transgenerational trauma in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Burnt Shadows, focusing on how historical violence is inherited across generations through memory, silence, and unconscious repetition. Drawing on psychoanalytic trauma theory, particularly the works of Sigmund Freud, Cathy Caruth, and Marianne Hirsch, the study argues that trauma in Burnt Shadows is not confined to individual experience but functions as a collective and inherited psychic burden shaped by global histories such as the Hiroshima bombing, the Partition of India, and post-9/11 Islamophobia. Through the characters of Hiroko Tanaka, Sajjad Ashraf, and Raza Konrad Ashraf, Shamsie demonstrates how unresolved trauma resurfaces in bodily memory, displacement, and cyclical patterns of loss.