| Title | : | A Golden Age (Bangla Desh, #1) |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Kindle Edition |
| Number of Pages | : | 326 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 2007 |
| Awards | : | Guardian First Book Award (2007), Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book Overall (2008) |
But no one can foresee what will happen in the days and months that follow. For this is East Pakistan in 1971, a country on the brink of war. And this family's life is about to change forever.
Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, 'A Golden Age' is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith, and unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone must make choices. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma.
A Golden Age (Bangla Desh, #1) Reviews
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Some khademul Islam from ‘Daily star’ has said that this book is a definitive novel on 1971!
Who is this man? Is he from Pakistan or outer planet? Please, send him a copy of ‘The days of 1971’ by Jahanara Imam.
Okay, before I say other things, first a little about Tahmima. She was born in 1975 in Dhaka but has grown up abroad (Goodreads says in Paris, New York City and Bangkok). Thus naturally She has very faint idea about Bengalis and her book says so.
Now she is from Harvard, so it becomes her responsibility to write a novel to keep alive the University tradition. Like uncle Ben of Peter Parker, we also can say, With big degree comes big responsibility to write a book! Now what to do! When she has a Bengali origin, why should not she encash the year of 1971? For the writers that year was ‘Annus mirabilis!’
Now let’s turn the pages of the novel ‘The golden age.’ The book is more about the personal life of Rehana Haque and her son Sohail and daughter Maya than about the happenings of 1971. Most of the descriptions of the book compel me to compare it with the book ‘The days of 1971’ by Jahanara Imam.
Following are the few points at which I felt immense amazement (disappointment also):
1. The novel ‘The golden age.’ has very critical name because I could not understand when a country is under military reign and the most fierce suppression, from which angle the time seems to be ‘golden’?
2. The book opens with a description of a party that Rehana was hosting. The main item was biriyani and as a sweet dish there was jilapi at the end. Wait, Jilapi! Why? In my whole life I have never seen that jilapi is given as the sweet dish. Have you?
3. Then 25 th of march. The Pak Sena gunned down Shahid Minar, University halls and Madhuda’s canteen, murdered eminent academics and several innocent citizens (Ref. The days of 1971). Rehana, Sohail and Maya was in the house of Mrs. Chowdhury where out of panic, Mrs. Chowdhury forced her daughter Silvi to marry Sabeer. The behavior of the characters that Tahmima portrayed throughout the book are simply illogical and out of consistency.
4. At the same night Mrs. Chowdhury’s dog Romeo got dead out of fear. In ‘The days of 1971,’ Imam’s dog also died that night. What a Dog-to-Dog resemblance!
5. After 25 th, refugees came to find a shelter at the house, Shona. Rehana instantly cooked chicken dishes, korma, okra etc. for them! Is not it strange!
6. So far I can imagine, Dhaka is a populated city. No one can posses a land of a size of ‘Do bigha jamin’!! So it is natural that Rehana’s one house and the her other house, Shona will be over a land of the size of few ‘Kathtas.’ Also, though Shona is at the back side of Rehana’s house, it is not situated at the end of a blind lane. Then how Aref and Joy brought a truckfull of medicines to Rehana’s home and nobody noticed it!!!
7. The guerrilla boys brought their severely wounded Major to Shona one night. A doctor operated him and major tooke shelter for nearly one month. Sometimes Aref or Joy or the Doctor used to come there. NO BODY NOTICED their movement! Fine!
8. Then, I did not understand, Why maya, who is a member of communist party and a supporter of Mukti Judha did not want to shelter Major!! Sudden mood change due to hormonal imbalance?
9. Rehana took care of major and provided breakfast, lunch and dinner to him. Nice. What I want know who GAVE HIM BEDPANE? WHO USE TO BRUSH AND SHAVE HIM? WHO CHANGED HIS CLOTHINGS? no answer. RATHER the Major even in his sick bed always have breath with a smell of watermelon!!!!
10. Rehana went with Faiz to bring Sabeer from jail in a car! Faiz was reading a English newspaper where Maya, from Calcutta has published an essay in support of guerrilla war. Newspaper, in English? In 1971? Without military censorship? ‘The days of 1971’ says a different story.
11. One does not need to cross Howrah Bridge to reach Saltlake from Calcutta.
12. Throughout the novel you will not be able to differentiate the seasons, day or night, morning and noon, afternoon and evening. At the morning it is foggy, at noon sun is blazing! In December night, fan is at full speed!
13. Rehana and Maya were sleeping side by side in a bed. At night major came and lifted Rehana from her bed and carried to Shona. They made love for whole night and Maya could not know that her mother is absent from bed!!! How did major entered the home at all? Is this usual for the Dhakha habitants to go to sleep without locking their doors?
14. Is any military man so much dumb headed that they thought major as Rehana’s son Sohail!!!!! Major is even older than Rehana!! THOUGH A COW IS TOO HEAVY TO CLIMB EVEN A ROSEBUSH, THE AUTHOR HAS SENT IT TO MARS!!!
These are only few cases that I mentioned. I can find faults in every pages and put exclamation marks every alternate lines. But I am feeling tired.
Finally, the incidents of 1971 is always a hot selling topic and no doubt Tahmima wanted to encash it. She is very much successful in selling her books. THOUGH THE BOOK WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH MUCH BETTER ONLY IF TAHMIMA HAS SOME SENSE OF LOGIC. -
The Bangladesh War of Independence, or simply the Liberation War in Bangladesh, was a revolution and armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in East Pakistan and the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. It resulted in the independence of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The war began after the Pakistani military junta based in West Pakistan launched Operation Searchlight against the people of East Pakistan on the night of 25 March 1971. It pursued the systematic elimination of nationalist Bengali civilians, students, intelligentsia, religious minorities and armed personnel. The junta annulled the results of the 1970 elections and arrested Prime Minister-elect Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. ~ source: Wikipedia
Rehana Haque, a widow with two young adult children lived in Bangladesh. 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. She had asked her father to find her a husband with little ambition. Someone whose fortunes had nowhere to go ...
Life was good in her bungalow with her card-playing friends, her two neighbors who were more than family to her, and a secret she kept since her children were taken away from her ten years earlier. They came back into her life in a mysterious way.
It was the day of the tenth celebration party for her two children's return, when the gun fire started in the city and keep on thundering for the next nine months in 1971.That those nine months of the war were like nine generations, brimming with lives and deaths; that Sohail had survived, while his friends had died; and that here was the city, burned and blistered and alive, where she was going to see what remained of the man with the scar across his face who had lived in her house for ninety-six days and passed like a storm through her small life.
Historical fiction. A tale of loss, love and betrayal. 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.
The ending left the impression that this book might be a series (which it turned out to be). The denouement left me slightly annoyed, but despite that, it was a beautifully written story in prose that flowed like music on paper. Colorful, cinematic, atmospheric, mesmerizing, warm, gripping, and absolutely worth the read.
RECOMMENDED -
I enjoyed this first novel, which relates the struggles of the widowed Rehana Haque to support and protect her grown son Sohail and daughter Maya, during the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. Both university students active in the Bangladeshi independence movement, he becomes a freedom fighter and she moves to India to write press releases for the nascent government-in-exile. Not a revolutionary, Rehana nevertheless agrees with her children's views and, with a mother's mixed feelings borne of fear of the risks they are taking, gets drawn into their guerilla activities herself.
This is the first in Anam's Bengal trilogy, which follows the fortunes of Rehana's children and grandchildren after the war, and I look forward to the next volume, The Good Muslim. -
নিজের চোখে একাত্তর দেখে লেখা স্মৃতিচারণ মূলক মুক্তিযুদ্ধ বিষয়ক বেশ কিছু বই এই বছরেই পড়েছি। সেই স্মৃতি এখনও টাটকা। এই বই পড়তে গিয়ে রীতিমতো সমস্যায় পড়ে গেছি। গল্পের সবাই কল্পিত চরিত্র এই ব্যাপারটা মেনে নিতে প্রথম দিকে বেশ হিমশিম খেতে হয়েছে। সেটা অবশ্য আমার ব্যক্তিগত সমস্যা। অন্য কারো সমস্যা হবে এমনটা বলছিনা।
বইটা কিনেছিলাম কাভারের লোভে পড়ে। উজ্জ্বল সোনালী রঙের একটা কাভার। কি সুন্দর! বইয়ের শিরোনামের সাথে সামন্জস্য রেখে এই কাভার করা হয়েছে বোঝা যায়। আচ্ছা, বইয়ের শিরোনাম কেন
A Golden Age বা
সোনাঝরা দিন?? একাত্তরের দুর্বিসহ দিনগুলোকে আমি কোনোভাবেই সোনাঝরা দিন হিসেবে মেনে নিতে পারিনা!
বইটা পড়তে গিয়ে অসংখ্য জায়গায় খটকা লেগেছে। গল্পের শুরুটাই ছিল কেমন যেন খাপছাড়া খাপছাড়া। কাহিনী বোঝা যাচ্ছিল না ঠিকমতো। এবার অন্যান্য খটকাগুলো বলি।
ছেলে আর মেয়ের প্রতি মিসেস রেহানার বৈষম্যমূলক আচরণ খুব দৃষ্টিকটু লেগেছে। সোহেল যুদ্ধে যাবে, সেটা আবার মাকে না বলে যাওয়া যাবেনা। ব্যাপারটা কোনো একটা সত্যি গল্পের সাথে বড় বেশি মিলে যায়না?? অপরদিকে মায়ার জন্য বিশ্ববিদ্যালয় ক্যাম্পাসে গিয়ে সভাসমাবেশ করাও নিষিদ্ধ! রীতিমতো গোয়েন্দাগিরি করে ক্যাম্পাস থেকে খুঁজে বের করে মায়াকে বাড়ি ফিরিয়ে এনেছেন তিনি!
এই কমিউনিস্ট মায়া-ই আবার মেজরকে নিজেদের বাড়িতে যায়গা দিতে সম্মত হয়নি! সে মনেপ্রানে মুক্তিযুদ্ধের অংশ হতে চায় অথচ একজন মুক্তিযোদ্ধাকে সাহায্য করতে রাজিনা!
সোহেল প্রথম গেরিলা অপারেশনে বিস্ফোরকের টাইমার ফিক্স করতে গিয়ে স্ট্যাচু হয়ে যাওয়ার ব্যাপারটাও কেমন যেন। এত প্রশিক্ষণ প্রাপ্ত একজন গেরিলার পক্ষে এমন ভুল মেনে নেয়া যায়না। আমাদের সত্যিকারের গেরিলা যোদ্ধাদের সাহসীকতার কোনো তুলনা হয়না! পরবর্তীতে আবার মাকে বলে সে এসব কাজের উপযুক্ত না। গুলি করা কিংবা প্রশিক্ষণ নেয়া তার উচিত হয়নাই। আরও পরে সম্ভবত এক জায়গায় বলে তার কাছে দেশের চাইতেও সিলভি বেশী প্রিয়! একজন গেরিলা যোদ্ধার মুখে একথা শোভা পায়না। সিলভির আস্থা ফিরে পাওয়ার জন্য এই সোহেলই আবার সমস্ত ঝুঁকি জেনেও মাকে পাকিস্তানি ক্যাম্পে পাঠায় তার চাচা ফয়েজের কাছে সিলভির বর সাবিরের মুক্তির অনুরোধ নিয়ে! এটা একটু বেশী বাড়াবাড়ি হয়ে গেল না?? যুদ্ধের সময়গুলোতে মানুষ নিজের মুক্তির জন্যও কোনো পাকিস্তানির কাছে ছোট হতে চাইতো না!
যুদ্ধের পুরো সময়ে মিসেস রেহানাদের বাড়ি আর সোনার গায়ে ভয়াবহতার কোনো আশ লাগেনি এটা কি বিশ্বাসযোগ্য?? গেরিলা যোদ্ধারা এতবার বাড়িতে যাতায়াত করছে অথচ কেউ টের পায়নি এটা কিভাবে সম��ভব! এমনকি ওরা গোলাপঝাড়ের ধারে লুকিয়ে রাখা গর্ত থেকে অস্ত্র উদ্ধার করার মুহূর্তেও মিলিটারিরা টহল দিয়ে গেছে। কিন্তু তারা কোনো মুক্তিয���দ্ধাকে দেখতে পেলনা!
অপারেশন থেকে ফিরে মেজর রেহানাকে পাঁজাকোলা করে তুলে সোনায় নিয়ে গেল অথচ রেহানার ঠিক পাশেই ঘুমিয়ে থাকা মেয়ে মায়া কিচ্ছু টের পেলনা! সত্যি!! মেজর রেহানাদের বাড়ির মধ্যে ঢুকলই বা কিভাবে??
সবশেষে বিরক্ত লেগেছে নিজের ছেলে সাজিয়ে মেজরকে মিলিটারিদের হাতে তুলে দেয়ার ব্যাপারটা। পাকিস্তানি একজন কর্নেল এতটাই বলদ যে পূর্ণবয়স্ক একজন লোককে দেখেও বুঝতে পারল না এই লোক রেহানার যুবক ছেলে নয়!
মোটকথা বইটা পড়ে একটুও শান্তি পাইনি। কমনওয়েলথ সাহিত্য পুরষ্কার প্রাপ্ত বইয়ের কাছে প্রত্যাশাটা আরো অনেক বেশি ছিল। তবে কিছু কিছু জায়গায় লেখক যুদ্ধকালীন বেদনা ভালোই ফুটিয়ে তুলতে পেরেছেন। যেমন শারমিনের মর্মান্তিক পরিণাম, সাবিরের উপর নির্মম অত্যাচারের চিত্র, রিফিউজি ক্যাম্পের ভয়াবহতা, মিসেস সেনগুপ্তের করুণ পরিণতি -এই কষ্টগুলো হৃদয় ছুঁয়ে যায়। সত্যিসত্যি একাত্তরের কথা মনে করিয়ে দেয়।
P.S. আরেকটা ব্যাপার উল্লেখ না করে পারছিনা। সাহিত্য প্রকাশের বাধাই এত খারাপ কিভাবে হল?? বইটা পড়তে গিয়ে প্রথম দিনেই মলাট খুলে গেছে! এ ব্যাপারে প্রকাশনীগুলোর আরেকটু যত্নবান হওয়া উচিত। -
I did not know even the most solid facts of this history. My ignorance is all the more embarrassing since I live in an area of London with a large Bengali community and count Bengali folks among my students & their families. One of the things I find most frustrating about myself is that my memory will not hold dates, will not hold a timeline, seems radically inhospitable to histories. I find it very difficult to read historical non-fiction. I need a novel, or at least a memoir, a personal story that I can feel along with, to absorb even the simplest information about past events. Tahmima Anam has offered that here, threading the line of a history with beads of life. Our protagonist, Rehana, is an unintentional hero, pushed by circumstance to be extraordinarily courageous when all she wants is a life of wholeness and peace.
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. Although Rehana and her children love poetry, the text doesn't seem infused with it, and the style of narrative structure is conventionally linear and climactic. Rehana is appealing and her viewpoint is realistically embodied. She's never analytical, and not particularly reflective so I construct her character and those of others in her life mainly from their behaviour, which often isn't that illuminating. In general there is one act, one event after another. This is an effective way to communicate the urgent story of the conflict, and I was engaged with Rehana's feelings and relationships. While she is not an especially charismatic lead, her character does offer some delicious surprises...
I love reading about food, and this novel was very satisfying on that score, with every meal at least briefly described. Food is a carrier of emotion and often expresses what can't be said. In a moment of crisis Rehana assesses her stores and decides she can feed her family for five days, then she finds that her Hindu tenant is sheltering a group of twenty or thirty refugees, and she immediately uses all her supplies preparing hot vegetarian food for them. 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.
As with other novels I've read where conflict turns a family life upside down, there's an underlying story that would have been worth telling by itself: Rehana's struggle to get her children back from her brother after losing custody, and their life as a single-parent family struggling to come to terms with their feelings about the separation, to say nothing of the adolescent and adult lives and loves of the kids. This positioning of the family across the division of Pakistan creates strong tensions that complicate the emotional and narrative texture here and allows some contrasts to be made naturally. In East Pakistan/Bangladesh, Muslims and Hindus live comfortably in mixed neighbourhoods and in friendship (Rehana's friendly relationship with her Hindu tenants is significantly on display even in their absence). Rehana's sisters in Karachi and sister-in-law in Lahore are, in contrast (although they all grew up in Calcutta), contemptuous and racist towards Hindus. It's clear that such attitudes facilitate genocidal 'cleansing' of Bengal.
Rehana may be an accidental revolutionary, facing victims of violent displacement and torture with little more resource than her native compassion, but her children are committed activists pouring all of their time and effort into the cause of independence. I particularly wanted to understand her daughter, Maya, because Rehana herself seems baffled by her, and only her passionate rage over the fate of her beloved friend Shaheen gives a glimpse of her vulnerabilities. I hope to get to know her better in Anam's sequel,
The Good Muslim -
In my multi-year quest of reading a book from every country, I still had not checked off Bangladesh. I've had this book since I found it on paperbackswap in 2012, so it's been on my shelf for a while too.
The novel starts on the eve of war for Bangladesh's independence in 1971 (instigated by genocide against Bengali by West Pakistan, which is puzzling looking at geography but not so puzzling if you know about Partition.) A widow, Rehana, is the central character, suddenly having to navigate revolutionary children, a sudden turn against Bengali nationalism, and an opportunistic brother in law.
Apparently this is the first of a trilogy about Bangladesh, so I'm definitely interested in the other two books. -
This is a debut novel set against the Bangladesh War of Independence; it’s not a historical novel, but the story is told through the medium of one family and those in their immediate circle. The plot has a personal inspiration and is the story of Rehana Haque. She is a single mother; her children are in their late teens and are part of the struggle for independence.
There is the brutality of war, mostly at a distance, sometimes present and political events intrude; but there is a continuum of family life, food, neighbours, love and loss. Sadly, I don’t know enough about the historical events to comment on the historical accuracy, but Anam tells an engaging story. Whilst there is warmth and empathy for those struggling for independence, the characterisation is very polarised and the Pakistan based characters tend to be generally evil. The violence and atrocities are there, but they are not overdone, nor too vividly drawn.
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. I enjoyed it and it covered an area that I know too little about. -
Dear Husband,
What an opening line. Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age plunges you right into the twin events that form the basis of Rehana's character as a parent, fiercely protective and determined to have them near her. The death of her husband and her fight to keep her children, when her dead husband's brother and his childless wife claim they could take better care of them.
I lost our children today.
The first chapter begins with that day in 1959 when the court gives custody to her brother and sister-in-law, who live in Lahore,(West Pakistan) over 1000 miles and an expensive flight away from Dhaka (East Pakistan). The novel then jumps forward and is set in 1971, in Dhaka, the year of its war of independence, when East separated from West and became Bangladesh (when you look at the area on a map, they are geographically separate, with no common border, India lying between them).
In 1971, Rehana's children, Maya and Sohail are now university students and back living with their mother after she discovered a way of becoming financially independent without having to remarry. Despite her efforts to protect them, she is unable to stop them becoming involved in the events of the revolution, her son joining a guerilla group of freedom fighters and her daughter leaves for Calcutta to write press releases and work in the nearby refugee camps.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, Maya too. Even Rehana could see the logic: what sense did it make to have a country in two halves, posed on either side of India like a pair of horns?
Rather than lose her children again, Rehana supports them and their cause, finding herself on the opposite side of a conflict to her disapproving family who live in West Pakistan.As she recited the pickle recipe to herself, Rehana wondered what her sisters would make of her at this very moment. Guerillas at Shona. Sewing kathas on the rooftop. Her daughter at rifle practice. The thought of their shocked faces made her want to laugh.She imagined the letter she would write. Dear sisters, she would say. Our countries are at war; yours and mine. We are on different sides now. I am making pickles for the war effort. You see how much I belong here and not to you.
Anam follows the lives of this one family and their close neighbours, illustrating how the historical events of that year affected people and changed them. It is loosely based on a similar story told to the author by her grandmother who had been a young widow for ten years already, when the war arrived.When I first sat down to write A Golden Age, I imagined a war novel on an epic scale. I imagined battle scenes, political rallies, and the grand sweep of history. But after having interviewed more than a hundred survivors of the Bangladesh War for Independence, I realised it was the very small details that always stayed in my mind- the guerilla fighters who exchanged shirts before they went into battle, the women who sewed their best silk saris into blankets for the reugees. I realised I wanted to write a novel about how ordinary people are transformed by war, and once I discovered this, I turned to the story of my maternal grandmother, Mushela Islam, and how she became a revolutionary.
It's a fabulous and compelling novel of a family disrupted by war, thrown into the dangers of standing up for what they believe is right, influenced by love, betrayed by jealousies and of a young generation's desire to be part of the establishment of independence for the country they love.
It is also the first novel in a trilogy, the story continues in
The Good Muslim and
The Bones of Grace: A Novel. -
Oh, how I love to get my facts of the world from historical fiction! I just can't get enough of it, especially when it's about something I know nothing about, like the 1971 Bangladeshi struggle for independence from Pakistan. 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. This is one great read. Oh yeah baby!
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Until the end of 1971, Bangladesh, inhabited mainly by Bengalis, was known as ‘East Pakistan’. West Pakistan, now all that remains of Pakistan is, and was inhabited by a Punjabi majority. In 1970, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (‘Mujib’,a Bengali) and his party won the parliamentary elections. Mujib was prevented from taking office by President General Yahya Khan, of West Pakistan, who along with many of his fellow Punjabis and Pathans held the Bengalis in low regard. He arrested Mujib in early 1971 and launched a vicious military assault on East Pakistan. Its aim was to decimate the Bengali population. 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. Had it not been for the intervention of Indian armed forces, many more would have been killed. By the end of 1971, Yahya’s forces were defeated; Mujib was released, and soon after this East Pakistan divorced itself from West Pakistan and the republic of Bangladesh was born.
Tahmima Anam, the author of
A Golden Age was born in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, 4 years after the end of the Bangaldeshi’s struggle against Yahya Khan's forces of West Pakistan. Yet, her novel which is set mainly in Dhaka during 1971 gave me the feeling that she had been an eye-witness of those troubled times.
The main character in the book is the widowed Rehana, a non-Bengali who lives in Dhaka. Both of her children become involved in the struggle against Yahya’s forces. She tries to maintain her home as things gradually deteriorate all around her and her children become ever more deeply embroiled in the resistance to the murderous thugs (including her brother-in-law whose home was in West Pakistan), who had invaded their country. At first, I was lulled into thinking that Rehana was an innocent in a sea of turmoil, but as the tale unwinds, I learned that she also harboured secrets, some of which had nothing to do with the invasion of Yahya’s forces.
The novel is beautifully written. Ms Anam gently creates the atmosphere of terror that was developing in Dhaka by subtle allusions to it. She resists the temptation to dwell on graphic descriptions of the atrocities performed by Yahya’s forces to suppress the Bengalis in order to ‘restore order’. And when, on occasion, she does describe such atrocities, she says only sufficient to allow the reader’s imagination to do the rest.
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. There is no glossary because Ms Anam follows in the footsteps of
Salman Rushdie, who led the way, according to what my wife learnt from a conversation with the author
Shashi Deshpande, in dispensing with such things. However, the inclusion of unexplained vernacular terms does not detract from the enjoyment of a book, which I can strongly recommend, nor its comprehensibility. -
Firstly, the positives:
This is a fictional take on the Liberation war of 1971. I'm sure many people in the world are unaware of the magnitude of horror that took place in our small country. This book must have put it on people's radar, and maybe inspired them to get to know about our nation a little better. For that, I am grateful.
Negatives:
Despite hearing negative reviews, I tried to keep an open mind while reading this. But immediately you can tell that this book was written by an outsider. Tahmima Anam might have Bangaldeshi ancestry, but she wrote like a non-native. Throwing in some bengali words like 'roshogolla' will not turn a novel into a cultural fiction - for that a certain soul is required.
Yes, the narrator is not Bangladeshi, so maybe her mannerisms could be different. But this was a Gulshan-Banani account of the war - the horrors were not impactful enough, and the character lens was so narrow. Rehana Haque is a woman born in Kolkata, widow of a Pakistani, and mother of Bangladeshi freedom fighters stuck in a war for a country she struggles to identify with. That could have led to a story of anguish and interesting philosophical questions. Instead it was a missed opportunity.
Lastly, the story itself did not seem well researched. The abundance of good food during the war. Rehana's endless amount of money to cook feasts every other day (no income source mentioned). And lastly and maybe most hilarious, the ease with which the Mukti Bahini went around in trucks to carry arms for their guerilla missions against Pakistan. Those days it was impossible to move around individually, curfew or not. Moving around with a truck full of soldiers and weapons is just fantasy.
The War of Liberation in 1971 is a matter of great pain and pride for us. The least any writer can do is remain faithful to the sacrifices, and not make it so bland that all the horror seems like a breeze. -
A Golden Age was Tahmima Anam’s first book and it’s not at all surprising to learn that it won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in 2008. It is stunning.
Anam has set her story mostly in the revolution that saw Bengal split from Pakistan to become Bangladesh. The central character, Rehana Haque, widowed mother of two children, was originally from Lahore in the western half of Pakistan, but has lived in Dhaka, the eastern Bengali capital since her marriage.
Rehana’s relationships with her neighbours, her children and wider family are portrayed skilfully, always rich and alive, if not always affectionate. Her life centres around her household, and that remains true even when revolution breaks out and she finds herself sheltering freedom fighters.
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. And although the subject matter is dark, many of the conversations are very funny, quite a remarkable achievement.
Indian writer Pankaj Mishra is quoted on the back cover of my edition of the book:
‘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’.
It’s a fantastic read.
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Anam grew up in Bangladesh and she has drawn on the stories told her by her parents who were both freedom fighters in Bangladesh’s War of Independence.
At the age of 2, she moved to Paris when her parents joined UNESCO as employees. 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tahmima...
Her father, Mahfuz Anam, edits and publishes an English language newspaper, has chaired the Asia news Network, and is actively involved in media and political life in Bangladesh.
Modern Bangladesh emerged as an independent nation in 1971 after breaking away and achieving independence from Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War. The country's borders corresponded with the major portion of the ancient and historic region of Bengal in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, where civilization dates back over four millennia, to the Chalcolithic. The history of the region is closely intertwined with the history of Bengal and the broader history of the Indian subcontinent
https://www.theguardian.com/books/200... -
This story about the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan takes place from very shortly before the civil war (with a completely unnecessary prologue set 20 years before) until the day before the war is over. It is the story of a family, of a mother who had given up her children (but not really) and of her children's political activities for their blossoming country.
While this is a beautiful setup, and there are some very striking scenes, it is sadly not because of the book that they are striking, it is simply history. The story falters when it isn't tagging along with the fantastical events of what actually happened. The writing is flabby and weak before the war starts and when it hits, the bad guys are easy to spot (they're either obscenely rich and wanting to commit genocide or else they have spittle--her word, not mine--hanging from their mouth) and the good guys are just plain old good. There is no room left for the complicated middle that war embodies. War is people doing terrible things to each other, something that the author refuses to bow to, as it would sully her perfectly formed, not really believable characters.
If this book did one thing it reminded me of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie. About the birth of India, it also covers the separation of Pakistan and Bangladesh but in a much more vivid, interesting way. It also made me more interested in the history of the region, so perhaps there is some compelling non-fiction I could parse through. As it is though, it is a book rife with big names, and big events and big, lofty ideals that can't ever be bothered with the dirt and strife that are real lives. -
অনুবাদ পড়েছি তাই কিছু জায়গা খুব খাপছাড়া মনে হয়েছে। নাহলে বোধয় ৫ তারাই দিতাম। অনুবাদকে খারাপ বলছিনা কিন্তু কয়েকটা লাইন যেন আক্ষরিক অর্থে অনুবাদ করা হয়েছে প্রথম দিকে। শেষের দিকটায় একদম অবশ্য সেসব বালাই নেই তাই খুব উপভোগ করেছি। একটা বড় দ্বিধা ছিল লেখিকার সম্পর্কে জেনে যে মুক্তিযুদ্ধের মতো বিষয়কে আসলে তার মর্যাদা অনুযায়ী প্রকাশ করতে পারবেন কিনা। কিন্তু যত পৃষ্ঠা উলটেছি তত মন ভাল লাগায় ভরে গেছে। শেষের টুইস্টটা ভাল ছিল। খুব অল্প কথায় যুদ্ধের ভয়াবহতা তুলে ধরাটাও ভাল লেগেছে।
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This story is set during the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. It revolved around one family; a single mother, her son and daughter, and how their life is affected by the war. The story is presented through the eyes of Rehana, the mother.
I had read earlier, in an interview, that the inspiration for the story was the real-life events of the writer's grandmother during the war. Tahmima Anam has beautifully created an atmosphere of war and instability throughout the book. One of the main things you will notice while reading the book is that the writer always tells us how the environment in the book smells. It actually helped me to be involved with the story and its settings.
Rehana is for sure one of the strongest female characters I have read. Her relationship with her neighbours, her children and the house is portrayed beautifully. Rehana, by nature, is a very modest woman who herself wouldn't have thought of being so strong. Situations persuaded her to be reliable. All she did was for her kids - either to make them happy or to make them alive. Throughout the story, Rehana does sympathise with the emotion of independent Bangladesh, but she did end up being a big part of the movement. This was not because Rehana wanted to do it for her country, she did the things she did, for her kids.
Though the story takes place during the war, we don't witness much violence in the book. The writer does write about the few instances and also has taken a few pages to make us understand the petrifying events of the time. This is mainly because the writer has strictly focused on the story on this one family.
Overall it's a good read. Do not expect to learn a lot about the Bangladesh War, Bangladesh People or its culture from this book, you will have a small idea about those after you read the book, but the book in whole is a novel about Rehana and her family! -
The setting is East Pakistan, 1971, a year that began with the outbreak of civil war against West Pakistan’s rule and ended with Bangladesh achieving independence. The horror of the war, the passion of the student population, many of whom became guerilla fighters, the sacrifices of and risks taken by ordinary people, the physical and psychological trauma, are all quite graphically portrayed. It is not an easy read but it is a compelling one that I won’t forget easily.
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Truly a pleasure to read. I looked forward to my time with it every day. I could smell the greasy food, feel the oppressive heat, hear the endlessly cascading rain, and see the red and white flowers Rehana grows in her garden.
The story takes place during the nine-month-long Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. Widow Rehana Haque's daughter Maya and son Sohail are teenagers, both heavily involved in the resistance efforts against West Pakistan. When her children were small and she first became a widow, Rehana lost custody of them and went to great lengths to get them back. Now, ten years later, she fears losing them again, this time to the war. In her fierce love and desperate need to keep them safe, she is willing to consider some unholy alliances and has to make difficult choices.
I found this book to have the perfect combination of elements in just the right proportions. I now understand why the Bengali people did not want to be ruled and exploited by the government of West Pakistan, 1,000 miles away. And I got a clear picture of Bengali life. 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. -
This would’ve been my first novel from this part of the world, and I was so interested to try it. Unfortunately, the less-than-stellar prose and the paper-thin characters prevented me from getting pulled in. I bailed just short of the 30% mark. I hope to find another, better novel from and about Bangladesh, and, yes, I might try a later one from Tahmima Anam.
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2,5*
Antes de ler este livro nem sabia que o Bangladesh fizera parte do Paquistão, no entanto, só a parte informativa da guerra da independência se safa, porque a escrita é banal e a protagonista é muito tonta. -
Fascinating read about a family amidst the Bangladesh independence war in 1971. The story was engaging and I also learned a lot about the country's history.
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Set in Dhaka against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence (aka the Liberation War),
Tahmima Anam's debut novel is a small but powerful story about family, heroism and different kinds of love.
Rehana Haque was widowed at a young age and struggled to keep her small family together. But on the eve of war, Sohail and Maya, her two children, are with her in Dhaka. Both are fiercely patriotic and politically active university students, and when war breaks out both play an active role. Rehana is drawn into their high-risk, underground world, and ultimately it is she who makes the decisions and takes the heroic actions that affect the lives of those around her.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. She had time to wake Maya and drag her to the drawing room. The army is here.
The language, the pace and the restraint from providing too much graphic detail added up to make this a surprisingly easy read for me. Anam's skill at gradually building a sense of doom was quite impressive - I almost couldn't read the last few pages. This is the first part of the Bangladesh trilogy, and I will certainly continue reading on to part #2 (which focuses on Sohail and Maya a decade later).
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I have to give a special shout out thank you to my GR friend Jalilah because if she had invited me to join the Middle Eastern reading group, I wouldn’t have read this wonderful book.
The novel follows Reena who lives in what today is Bangladesh. When the book opens Reena has just lost her children to her in-laws, and then the book jumps a few years into the future where Reena and her children struggle though Bangladesh birth pains as the country gains its independence from Pakistan.
While Reena herself is lukewarm on the question of independence, at least at first, her children are supportive, and Reena lives for her children. In many ways, Reena is an everywoman as she struggles to keep what remains of her family together and alive. Reena’s struggle is that of everywoman. She is not politically active, she is not a superwoman. She is what she is and that is it. And therein lays the charm of the story.
And it is a powerful story, heavy with accuracy and allowing the reader to figure things out. There is subtleness about the writing, yet it is a gripping story. -
Second book on Bangladesh this year, both during troublesome times.
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. Through her experiences, we get glimpses of the country during war times. -
Onvan : A Golden Age - Nevisande : Tahmima Anam - ISBN : 719560098 - ISBN13 : 9780719560095 - Dar 276 Safhe - Saal e Chap : 2007
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Liberation war will always be a red mark in the history of Bangladesh and as a proud Bangladeshi It always warms my heart seeing people all around the world reading and knowing about us, and "A Golden Age" opens a window for them to take a peek at our Glorious history, history of suffer, anguish, history of social, economic and political repression, history of bravery of our war heros and a golden triumphant, a country of our own!
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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 . It took It's extreme in 1971. From genocide to mass rape we had to go through all sort of degradation to achieve our freedom. 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. 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. Rehana is not politically active, but she is protective of her children. But what started with an utter maternal instinct soon got the hangover of revolution. It's well observed and executed. But as Anam did not have the first hand experience (as she was born and grew up in foreign country) some emotions felt overly done at some point. Overall It's a good story. A perfect 4 star read.
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[Sorry folks I'm having a hectic time recently, I wanted to write a detailed review on it, but couldn’t manage enough time, so maybe in future....... 😅 ]
Instagram -
Set in Bangladesh on the eve of the War of Independence with Pakistan in 1971,
A Golden Age is the story of a family, Rehana Haque, her son, Sohail, and daughter Maya. I picked the book up last night and at 2:30 am I was still reading. Rehana is a wonderful character, loving but flawed, and gifted with depths and strengths I would never have expected in the early part of the the book. She is gradually drawn into the the struggle for Bangladesh's independence and the way it all happens is so suspenseful it puts many thrillers to shame.
Along the way we get vivid glimpses of life in Bangladesh before the War of Independence, and of Benghal and Calcutta before Partition. Food features prominently, which always makes me happy: crispy samosas, dal, biryani cooked all day. Taste and fragrance and memory merge in word-pictures of the places Rehana has known: the smell of salt in the Karachi streets and the burned taste of kababs on Clifton Beach; the sweet Dhaka air in a garden filled with jasmine or ripening mangoes; and the heavy first drops of the monsoon rain that a child curves his face up to catch on his tongue.
The children grow up and into their own lives: Maya, always less loved and prickly for it; Sohail, spoiled, headstrong with a fatal obsessive love that will cost them all dearly. Rehana's neighbors and many of the other minor characters are sharply drawn and their stories are intertwined with those of Rehana and her children.
While most of the actions in the story takes place during 1971, the book opens with an event in March 1959, when Rehana, a new and impoverished widow, loses her children in a court-ordered transfer of custody to Rehana's brother and childless sister-in-law. Rehana's devastation and her obsession with regaining her children is the defining event of her life and shapes many of her later choices. Rehana is resourceful, brave and utterly determined then--and she finds those same qualities once more when revolution knocks on her door.
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.
Four and a half stars with a half star off for the lack of a glossary.
Content rating PG for war, torture, reports or threats of rape. -
Rather than depicting the events of Bangladesh independence, i.e. the split between East and West Pakistan in 1971, the central theme is a mother’s efforts to save her children. There is too little history. On the other hand, I just finished another book concerning how war wreaks havoc in people’s lives,
Scribbling The Cat, and that I loved. That didn’t have a lot about the exact historical events of the Rhodesian War, but I still loved it, so something else must be wrong. The central theme here, in the book about Bangladesh, is that all can be sacrificed except her children. The mother will do almost anything for her children. I think I couldn’t relate to that. In Fuller’s book I felt that the author was revealing her own search for coping with war experiences, not only K’s. I think I was touched by her honesty and willingness to reveal herself. 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.
Fuller’s book has humor that balances the terrible events. There is little humor in Anam’s book. I could place myself in Fuller’s book, and I could not do that in Anam’s book. Both books have sentences that are not translated into English. Fuller’s book has a section at the back that translates these expressions. Anam’s book didn’t. I did not have access to the translations because they are not included in the audiobook version. In both books you do understand what is going on, even without the translations. -
I visited Bangladesh over twenty years ago, when my mother lived there for several years. From all that we see of it in the news over here in Canada, you would think the country is in a perpetual state of flood/disaster/famine. So the first thing I thought on arrival was how colourful it was. Blue skies, brilliant flowers, colourful chaotic markets. But I felt like I was towing bad luck behind me. It was the last stop after a tour of India and Kashmir, and we had encountered Kashmiri curfews because Pakistan's General Zia had just been killed that day, and Srinigar was taut with fear. Kashmir's tourist industry would soon collapse. We then went on to Kathmandu, where we came upon a human chain dredging a river looking for bodies, after a busy but rickety wooden bridge collapsed. And sure enough, within a week or two of arrival, the floods arrived in Dhaka, displacing thousands. And then I saw the brown dirty waters, gray skies and tense worried faces that were such a familiar sight on the newscasts. The trip was cut short, in order to escape the rising waters, and I never felt like I had the chance to properly 'meet' the country.
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. This was Tahmima Anam's first novel, and it won a Commonwealth Prize for best first book. It is an old-fashioned yarn of family love triumphing over adversity, then being further tried by the murky oppressions of rebellion and war, with a good twist to the ending.
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. It will be interesting too, to see if and how Anam's writing style has changed for this book that has come out 3 years after the first one. -
I enjoyed this novel set in Bangladesh on the eve of and during the War of Independence with Pakistan in 1971. It is told with a narrow focus, through a middle-aged widow who was an outsider to Bengal nationalism (she grew up in Kolkota, on the Indian side of the border from Bangladesh, as a Urdu speaker, it was a bit vague whether she was ethnically Bengal or not), and her two nationalist, college-aged children. The author makes little attempt to explain the history and ethnic differences (sending me to do some outside reading), and hides key details about the characters lives until later in the story. That worked fine for me, although other readers in our group were frustrated by the withholding of information.
The first third was a bit slow and harder to get through, with the confusing characters and historical situation. But after that things became clearer, and the plot became more exciting as the war heated up. The three main characters were all intriguing figures.
The author comes from a famous Bangladeshi family of authors and journalists, but she grew up mostly out of the country. My Bangladeshi friend in our book group was bothered by what she saw as a lot of inaccuracies about the history and culture. -
Epoca de aur descrie anul in care Bangladeshul si-a castigat independenta fata de Pakistan din perspectiva Rehanei, o tanara vaduva, mama a doi copii. Povestea de viata a Rehanei este foarte interesanta, ea, asa cum se descrie fiind intai de toate o mama. Povestea incepe inainte de 1971, atunci cand Rehana isi pierde temporar copiii, dupa moartea sotului. Descumpanita de turnura pe care a luat-o viata ei, nu reuseste sa il convinga pe judecator ca ii poate creste singura pe Sohail si Maya, iar acestia sunt luati timp de un an de rude. Dar Rehana isi revine repede, construieste o casa si din inchirierea ei reuseste sa stranga banii necesari sa ii aduca inapoi langa ea. Razboiul de independenta ii gaseste pe acestia doi studenti, cu viziuni comuniste, dornici sa se implice in razboiul de independenta.
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).
Daca insa incepi sa scormonesti detaliile istorice si lucrurile care ar trebui sa fie totusi veridice, povestea incepe sa scartaie. In favoarea ei, autoarea s-a nascut la 4 ani dupa evenimente si a crescut in afara Bangladeshului. Insa o cercetare mai intensa si o mai mare atentie la detalii ar fi facut o mare diferenta in poveste.
