An unnamed man—later revealed to be Raza Konrad Ashraf, the son of Hiroko Tanaka and Sajjad Ali Ashraf—is ordered to undress in a holding cell at an undisclosed location, later implied to be Guantanamo Bay. Naked and alone, Raza waits for the guards to return and wonders, “How did it come to this?” (1).

Shamsie’s novel opens in Nagasaki, Japan, on the morning of August 9, 1945—the day the United States will drop the second-ever nuclear bomb in warfare. Germany has surrendered to the Allied Forces, and the Empire of Japan is on the brink of defeat. Hiroko Tanaka, a 21-year-old munitions factory worker and former schoolteacher, is in love with Konrad Weiss, a 29-year-old German expatriate living in Nagasaki. Konrad looks forward to seeing Hiroko later that day since the munitions factory where she works is closed due to a steel shortage. Konrad reflects on the futility of Japan’s war effort and walks the grounds of Azalea Manor, which belongs to the family of his English brother-in-law, James Burton. Unable to stay with his English in-laws at their home in Delhi because his German nationality is politically dangerous to James during World War II, Konrad lives in the groundskeeper’s cottage at Azalea Manor and rents the mansion to Japanese tenants.