A Golden Age

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A Golden Age is laced with transliterations of Bangla and Urdu words, which will be understood by those familiar with the sub-continent, but may puzzle readers who are not. Divided Pakistan is not just the background against which the stories of the individual characters are told but the struggle for independence is told through the characters themselves, some from the west, and all vividly drawn. Every year,' Rehana observes, 'the land will turn to sea as it disappears under the spell of water, and then prevail again, as if by magic, and this refrain, this looping repetition, is the archive of its long, flood-turned history.

I'm going to start right into the next book of this trilogy, The Good Muslim, while the characters are still fresh in my mind. This was not because Rehana wanted to do it for her country, she did the things she did, for her kids. Right after the partition in 1947, when East Pakistan and west Pakistan was born, there was too much contrast between two parts of Pakistan in all shape and form, which gradually formed into a very chaotic political situation followed by unequal distribution of resources . Women and War: Negotiating the Interstital Spaces Between Gender and Nation in Tahmima Anam's "A Golden Age". The junta annulled the results of the 1970 elections and arrested Prime Minister-elect Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.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. Of a family who survived when Rehana Haque did everything she could, facing death and destruction, to protect her two children, daughter Maya and son Sohail. Anam, choosing the zoomed in scenery of an upper middle class family, brilliantly connected the conflict and struggle at familial level to the much bigger story of revolution.

She had married a man she had not expected to love; loved a man she had not expected to lose; lived a life of moderation, a life of few surprises. Insa o cercetare mai intensa si o mai mare atentie la detalii ar fi facut o mare diferenta in poveste. Set on that turbulent time span, A Golden Age is the story of Rehana, a middle aged muslim woman and a mother of two grown up child, caught in the midst of violent atmosphere of 71.As a Muslim woman and mother caught in the midst of a violent conflict, Rehana reminded me of the main character in The Woman from Tantoura, Ruqayya, so I could not help finding this book less impressive than Ashour's superlative novel, although it is certainly affecting and expressive. Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan before its fight for independence from Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War. Throughout the novel you will not be able to differentiate the seasons, day or night, morning and noon, afternoon and evening. She heard the trucks before they turned on to the road; she felt them slowing in front of the bungalow, lining up along the neighbourhood gates. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma.

I enjoyed this novel set in Bangladesh on the eve of and during the War of Independence with Pakistan in 1971. And sure enough, within a week or two of arrival, the floods arrived in Dhaka, displacing thousands. West enjoyed political and economic supremacy; East was a poor relation, neglected even during the cyclones and floods that plagued its delta planes. It pursued the systematic elimination of nationalist Bengali civilians, students, intelligentsia, religious minorities and armed personnel. With the conflict taking its bloody course in the East, Rehana realises she cannot stop them from joining the Bangla effort as freedom fighters.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.