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A Golden Age

A Golden Age

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My Bangladeshi friend in our book group was bothered by what she saw as a lot of inaccuracies about the history and culture. It is undeniably an important story, sensitively told, which filled me in on a time and place that I was distinctly hazy about. A little bit of culture, a little bit of politics, a little bit of betrayal and the dark side of human desire, a little bit of the horrors of war and torture, and a lot of family loyalty. a b c d "Discourse of Discontent: A Study of Select Works of Tahmina Anam, Taslima Nasrin and Manjushree Thapa" (PDF). In A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, the mother reveals herself honestly; it is clear that she has made questionable choices, done things she shouldn’t have done, but she remained only a fictional character for me.

The behavior of the characters that Tahmima portrayed throughout the book are simply illogical and out of consistency. Faiz was reading a English newspaper where Maya, from Calcutta has published an essay in support of guerrilla war. Povestea incepe inainte de 1971, atunci cand Rehana isi pierde temporar copiii, dupa moartea sotului. Ca poveste, romanul este frumos, vocea Rehanei te atrage intr-o istorisire simpla, o descriere usor naiva a unor evenimente dramatice (cand profesori si intelectuali erau executati la Universitate, personajele noastre mananca byiriani si o casatoresc pe Sylvie). In my multi-year quest of reading a book from every country, I still had not checked off Bangladesh.The Pak Sena gunned down Shahid Minar, University halls and Madhuda’s canteen, murdered eminent academics and several innocent citizens (Ref. Tahmima Anam’s startlingly accomplished and gripping novel describes not only the tumult of a great historical event … but also the small but heroic struggles of individuals living in the shadow of revolution and war’. This one is told from the view point of a widow during the war between east and west Pakistan and the birth of Bangladesh and her experiences. The novel is well written and easy to read; the main strength is the family drama and there is a good bit of tension as well.

Food features prominently, which always makes me happy: crispy samosas, dal, biryani cooked all day. I have done quite a bit of reading this year on India and the subcontinent, both fiction and non-fiction, so the many untranslated phrases, names of foods, items of clothing, prayer times and rituals, etc, were all quite familiar to me, but for the uninitiated a glossary would have been helpful. The author was inspired by her family's personal experience of their role in the Bangladesh Independence war. She grew up in Paris, New York, and Bangkok, learning the story of the Bangladesh Liberation War from her family since her father fought in the war. Most of the descriptions of the book compel me to compare it with the book ‘The days of 1971’ by Jahanara Imam.This, her debut novel, is set in 1971 in East Pakistan, where Rehana Haque, a young widow, is throwing a party. This led to the 1971 Bangladesh genocide that caused millions of refugees to flee to India and the deaths of 58,000 to 3,000,000 civilians.

Maya: Rehana's daughter, university student, moves to Kolkata to be a journalist for the freedom fighters. So it was good to read a novel written by a Bengali, and feel like she has shown me a personal portrait of a family living through, and taking part in, the country's tumultuous birth in 1971. The author shows the fears and animosities among the various religious and ethnic groups, while also giving beautiful examples of tenderness and generosity from people willing to cross those lines and care deeply for those who are supposed to be enemies.It pursued the systematic elimination of nationalist Bengali civilians, students, intelligentsia, religious minorities and armed personnel. I love reading about food, and this novel was very satisfying on that score, with every meal at least briefly described.

The book ends 16 December 1971, the day that the treaty is signed and Bangladesh gained their independence. During this operation, about a million East Pakistanis fled to neighbouring India and anything between 30,000 and 3,000,000 East Pakistanis were massacred.The edition I read was published in 2012 as part of the Canongate ‘ the Canons‘ list, which is a slightly strange mixture of ‘boundary-breaking’ books that Canongate decided either were already classics in their own right, or deserved to be. This kind of generosity, characteristic of Rehana, and, in my real life and literary experience, par for the course among Muslims, is striking and moving to me. The territories were situated on either side of India as the book phrases "a pair of horns" on either side of India.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
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