A friend gave me a copy of A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, as a present a couple of months ago, and I finally got around to reading it this week. A Golden Age, it turns out, is a very strong first novel, written in a direct, natural style, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. 
Anam’s is the first novel put out by a western publisher that I know of to have Bangladesh’s war for independence as its main theme, and for that reason alone, I suspect A Golden Age will become the kind of book that is often taught in college classes on “South Asian Literature” (like the courses I myself get to teach every couple of years). The War is important in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, but only at a great distance (Mistry’s novel is set in Bombay). And a section of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children deals with this event, but it comes near the end, and Rushdie addresses it in rather lyrical terms — you don’t really get a solid explanation of how the war started or what it was about.
Here, you do. The center of the novel is, of course, the family drama — involving a widow named Rehana and her two grown children, Sohail and Maya. Both of the children are politically oriented, and take a strongly pro-Bangla, pro-Sheikh Mujib position on the events that transpired in 1971. By contrast, their mother Rehana is at first reluctant to make a commitment — though the needs of her children soon force her to inject herself into the conflict. She also begins to come out of her shell emotionally, which is of course what most readers want to see.
Here is an early passage in A Golden Age, one of the first direct discussions of the political situation:
He’ll never make a good husband, she heard Mrs Chowdhury say. Too much politics.
The comment had stung because it was probably true. Lately the children had little time for anything but the struggle. It had started when Sohail entered the university. Ever since ’48, the Pakistani authorities had ruled the eastern wing of the country like a colony. First they tried to force everyone to speak Urdu instead of Bengali. They took the jute money from Bengal and spent it on factories in Karachi and Islamabad. One general after another made promises they had no intention of keeping. The Dhaka University students had been involved in the protests from the very beginning, so it was no surprise Sohail had got caught up, and Maya too. Even Rehana could see the logic; what sense did it make to have a country in two halves, poised on either side of India like a pair of horns?
But in 1970, when the cyclone hit, it was as though everything came into focus. Rehana remembered the day Sohail and Maya had returned from the rescue operation: the red in their eyes as they told her how they had waited for the food trucks to come and watched as the water rose and the bodies washed up on the shore; how they had realized, with mounting panic, that the would wouldn’t come because it had never been sent.
The next day Maya had joined the Communist Party.
Clearly from the above, one can see that Anam sees the war of liberation firmly from a Bangladeshi perspective, where the Pakistani Army is the villain. (Here I should say that I fully agree with her; Yahya Khan is thought to have said, “Kill 3 million of them, and the rest will be eating out of our hands”…) Operation Searchlight is described, as are the attacks on East-Pakistani/Bangladeshi Hindus. The Indian intervention is seen as a positive development, preventing what might have turned into an all-out genocidal suppression. (Estimates on the number of Bangladeshis killed by the Pakistani army in 1971 vary — from 200,000 to 3,000,000 — so it seems perfectly fair to suggest, as Anam does at one point, that Operation Searchlight was itself an act of genocide against the Bangladeshi people.)
Though she is undoubtedly a Bangladeshi partisan, Anam treats the gruesome acts of the war from a respectful distance; the story is told primarily from Rehana’s point of view, and as a non-combatant she wouldn’t have seen acts of torture or rape first-hand (though she does certainly encounter the results of those barbarities). Here I think she made the right choice. Extensively documenting the details of what the Pakistani army did in fact do that year would have overwhelmed the novel — and that kind of documentation is, anyway, the job of a historian. One shouldn’t think of A Golden Age as some kind of definitive account of 1971, but rather as an accessible, novelistic introduction to that story.
There’s a little bit of Bengali literary culture alluded to in Anam’s novel, but not a huge amount. You have references to Sultana’s Dream and the songs of Tagore, but not Bibhutbushan Bandopadhyay, Saratchandra, or Bankim. But then, though their children study in the university, the Haque family is not really a literary family, so extended discourse on the Bengali Renaissance would be out of place.
My wife also found A Golden Age to be a satisfying read, and she is a software engineer (who finds writers like Rushdie too ornamental); perhaps her stamp of approval might actually mean more to non-academic readers than my own. That said, she did wonder whether there might be some points of culinary inaccuracy regarding the Bengali dishes described in the novel. For instance, is it likely that an upper middle-class Bangladeshi family would eat a meal of roast lamb, as the Haque family do early in the book (before the war starts)? My wife isn’t a Bengali, and neither of us have ever been to Bangladesh, but she thought it didn’t ring true.
thanks for reviewing the book! i read this as soon as i heard about it. i relished the details of the liberation war, particularly because my parents have never really spoken about the war with me openly. it’s a great read for all south asians (and others as well of course), but particularly for bangladeshi’s of our generation who have lacked such a medium to learn about bangladesh independence. and the fact that tahmima anam can actually write (as opposed to monica ali) makes the book that much better!
by the way, i didn’t find a mean of roasted lamb that bizarre. then again, i grew up in amreeka and i can never distinguish the bengali names or goat and lamb.
is it likely that an upper middle-class Bangladeshi family would eat a meal of roast lamb
In Indian subcontinent (or South Asia), the common delicacy is goat meat (mutton) at homes.
Also, full-fledged non-vegetarians, do not eat meat every day, just too pricey.
Lamb is too expensive to be eaten often, only in expensive restaurants.
I just finished her book a couple of weeks ago, and to be honest, I was a bit disappointed. Well, overall the book was a satisfying read and I do agree that it was slightly better than Brick Lane, but I feel that she could have added a lot more to it. I’m probably being unfair, but I feel compared to a lot of other South Asian literature out there, she didn’t really raise the bar. I went to a book reading of hers and she said she’s working on a second novel, so hopefully that one will transcend expectations
BengalTigress, what did you not like about it? (And: What kinds of writing do you like?)
roast mutton, very likely. lamb (meaning meat from sheep) isn’t something easily available, or sought after. it could simple be a semantics thing. although roast mutton isn’t an everyday thing for most middleclass people, upper or not.
oops, forgot to add, whereas, beef is…
6 · dude said
Muslims and Christians in many parts of India avoid beef. The wealthy Muslim families of the South – except in Kerala – keep clear of beef as it is a tradition to abstain from what is sacrilege to their Hindu friends. In many other parts of India too, for the welathy Muslims, beef is a cheap meat, while goat meat is the delicacy and signifies class. Among Christians in the South – except in Kerala – who have recent (I mean at least 300 years) memories of conversion from Hinduism, abstaining from beef is part of the Hindu tradition they haven’t given up. This is common both among Catholics and almost all non-Catholics I have known (except Pentecostals). But at the many Christian campuses across the South, beef is served at the messes and this is where most Christian friends of mine have gotten their first taste of beef! My Muslim friends at college however kept clear of all “non-veg” and stiuck to a vegetarian diet – not wanting to have anything haraam! I know two Bangladeshi-Indian and one Pakistani-Indian (all Muslim) couples. In all three families, beef is verboten!
The really good mutton one gets to have in India (not the wild sheep/ram strong flavored meat that is called mutton in the West) is from goat, and the slightly tougher or more rank meat one gets to have is from lamb/sheep. In the US you get to have lamb most of the time unless it is a Pakistani/Afghani run place where you get really good goat meat. Real good boti kabab comes from goat meat. And real good biryani, let’s not get started. There are characteristically good beef dishes – nihari, the beef fries and curries of the South, and some of the kababs. You will never have a steak or burger once you have had those.
“is it likely that an upper middle-class Bangladeshi family would eat a meal of roast lamb”
Don’t know about Bangladeshis, but Calcutta bengalis, definitely!! There’s a huge Raj-hangover contingent! I’ve personally heard people call each other “old chap” and generally speak like characters out of some sort of Graham Greene novel there. A great-uncle who lived there all his life was the caricature of the Brown Sahib.
Amardeep,
I feel that even though it did portray a lot of the turmoil during those times and allowed it to be seen in a somewhat objective light (as the narrator was formerly from Pakistan), I feel that the narration style could have been one that made you connect to the characters more, and allow you to feel their plight. From hearing lots of stories about the Bangladeshi war, I feel that not enough emotion was attached to it all. Overall it was a good read, but I wouldn’t read it over again. With writers in the South Asian literature diaspora like Kiran Desai and Rohin Mistry, I feel that Tahmima needs to up her game a bit so to say.
Thanks for the recommendation, Amardeep: I’ll look for it. Hopefully it will reaffirm my prejudices against the Pakistani military 😉 .
okay i swear i do not view everything through the ‘hot or not’ prism but i think she is…….hot I mean… in a a cute way……i am sure she writes well too….but for now thats all i have to add.
sorry….ya’ll were sayin….?
see i am so smitten i am beginning to stutter…..
there is a novel by pakistani writer sorayya khan by the title of noor that is wrapped around the 71 war. i think it is a superior novel to that of anam’s in terms of emotional depth and technique. see a review of it at writer mahmud rahman’s blog: http://www.mahmudrahman.com
moazzam
Hi…so I’m completely new to this blog. Though I haven’t read the book – if you wanted to inform London Residents that she will be speaking TOMORROW SUNDAY MARCH 9 here in LONDON.
Website: http://www.alternativearts.co.uk/cmsfiles/IWW_separate_pages.pdf
WISE WORDS produced by Alternative Arts Rich Mix 35-47 Bethnal Green Road. E1 6LA 6.30pm FREE 020 7247 258 BISHWO SHAHITTO KENDRO Tahmima Anam, ShamimAzad, Leeza Gazi, Khadija Rahman Bangladeshi women writers from Bishwo Shahitto Kendro (BSK) – theWorld Literature Centre – discuss Tamima Anam’s first novel ‘A Golden Age’ (John Murray) set in Bangladesh during theWar of Independence
Surprised that there have not been any comments on her ‘hotness’. The lady in the picture is so bloody hot.
I too thought that the book was just about an average read. There were certain setups in the book that came across as quite contrived — when she meets and cares for her tenants, the Senguptas, in an Indian refugee camp for example. Overall it was a tad too melodramatic.
A good start for a young author, I must admit.
Studying this novel in Jamaica. This text has reached across the great seas to an other hemisphere of this vast world and has scoped through the halls of time and has made an event of historical significance, but yet still of such a remote nature, personal and relevant to me, I felt as though i was on the streets in Bangladesh feeling their pain sharing in their sorrow and roaring at the top of my lungs ” JOY BANGALI”