A Golden Age: A Novel (P.S.) | Tahmima Anam

A Golden Age: A Novel (P.S.) | Tahmima Anam | Historical Fiction Done Brilliantly

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	A Golden Age: A Novel (P.S.) Tahmima Anam Harper Perennial, 2009 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 64 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Rehana Haque, a young widow, blissfully prepares for the party she will host for her son and daughter. But this is 1971 in East Pakistan, and change is in the air.

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 midst of chaos?and of one woman's heartbreaking struggle to keep her family safe.

Poignant masterpiece

Anam means without name or without fame. If Tahmima's first novel is any indication, her name, her characters and her writing, will be recognized by generations to come. We live in an age where such tag-lines accompany every review we read, and we hardly see serious criticism of ordinary work. To fish out a book like A Golden Age from a stack of books, all claimed to be pathbreaking and brilliant, requires a dint of luck. The aim of my review is to suggest why Tahmima Anam's novel deserves more readership than it has received so far. Since the plot of the novel is tied to the birth of Bangladesh, it provides an alternative history of the birth of a nation; but this subplot is secondary, though necessary part of the novel's appeal.

Rehana is a young widow, whose life revolves around her son, Sohail and daughter, Maya. Rehana grew up in Calcutta, and is as conversant in Urdu as she in Bengali, and most of her relatives live in West Pakistan, while she lives in Dhaka. Without giving away any subplots and surprises that fill this novel, let me say that the story revolves around the relationship of these three and the effect of Bangladesh War of Independence on their life and the life of their neighbors, friends and relatives. The narrative flows with a lyrical beauty, exposing us to the fears and dreams of Rehana, as she deals with national and personal events. Heroic personal struggles of Rehana and other characters are described with a dignity and delicacy; but together these individual struggles translate into a national struggle for survival of their language and identity. The mother-son and mother-daughter relationships are presented with honesty, which presents a reader with an unadulterated sense of how families in Bangladesh and everywhere, stay together, in spite of forces that try to disturb this harmony. Generation gaps, differences in desires and dreams, education, upbringing, personalities are all apparent in this novel; and yet it is also apparent that humanity knows how to express these in the worst and the best possible manner.

Let us look at an exemplary passage, where Rehana wonders if she should attend a meeting comprising of the friends of her son/daughter; the meeting is about "resistance" or the fight for Bangladesh:
"... she did not have the proper trappings of a nationalist. She did not have the youth, the appearance or the words. The correct words, though by now, familiar to her, did not glide easily from her tongue: 'comrade', 'proletariat', 'revolution'. They were hard, precise words and did not capture Rehana's ambiguous feeling about the country she had adopted. She spoke, with fluency, the Urdu of the enemy." It continues: "She could not give up her love for Urdu, its lyrical lilts, its double meanings, its furrowed beat.
No, Rehana didnot have the exactness to become a revolutionary. But she had recognized a long ago that, while the children will remain fixed at the center of her life, she would gradually fade out of theirs. She wanted to hold on for as long as she could, especially now that their dreams had suddenly grown so spacious. She turned into the kitchen and wondered how she would feed all the hungry dreamers."

The birth of Bangladesh as a nation is a story that must be told again and again. After 1947, India was partioned, and a Muslim dominated nation was constituted, including present day Pakistan and an East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh after 1971. The events that lead to creation of both Pakistand and later Bangladesh are rooted in religious and historical contexts, which need to be understood for various reasons. The most immediate cause for this study should be as it provides perspective on the conflicts in the Middle-East as well as Afghanistan-Pakistan. Even though religion united East and West Pakistan, the Bangla people were treated as lesser citizens. Such tribal/lingual divisions exist everywhere, and lead to bloodbaths every so often, say in 1990s in Afghanistan. Bangladesh's struggle to break free led to a widespread genocide of Muslims by Muslims, (and the Hindus living in that territory faced the worst). This had created a huge refugee influx into India and one of the greatest humanitarian crisis of twentieth century. Let me include a telling excerpt from the novel, where Tikka Khan (called "The Butcher of Bengal" elsewhere in novel) heads Pakistan forces, Zia, leads the Bangla resistance:

"Throughout June, Tikka Khan's soldier's made their way across the summer plains of Bangladesh. They looted homes and burned roofs. They raped. They murdered. They lined up the men and shooted them into ponds. They practiced old and new forms of torture. They were explorers, pioneers of cruelty, everyday outdoing their own brutality, everyday feeling closer to divinity, because they were told they were saving Pakistan, and Islam, maybe even the Almighty himself, from the depravity of Bengalis; in this feverish, this godly journey, their resolve could know no bounds.
The Bengali resistance was sporadic and weak. General Zia relied on the youthful spirit of his soldiers, and they had small victories. A blown-up bridge here. An army-convoy ambush there. A captured railway station. They celebrated these victories with the broadcasters of the radio, who sent up cheers in the homes of their listeners, those city dwellers spending long, hot afternoons hugging their wireless radios."

The context here has personal connotations for the protagonists: Sohail has joined the resistance movement, Rehana listens to the radio, raped and murdered women include Maya's friends, and so on. For me, personally, the grand success of Tahmima as a novelist lies in creation of character like Rehana, one of the finest female characters to emerge in English novel in recent times. As a mother from Indian sub-continent, she presents all the foibles and strength of that universal character, she represents a character that carries the essence of millions of women; as a human being, she carries weight of all our virtues and vices. Again and again, her characterization goes from being matter of fact, to being sublime. The dilemmas that Rehana faces may be considered as a source of engaging drama in a literary critique of the book, but for me that drama, that detail, those dilemmas provide the stamp of authenticity to author's writing. The nuances of the emotional state of a woman, are easily missed or misrepresented; the craft helps you to construct sentences, but it is a deep sensitivity and familiarity with the character that helps an author to make a full-bodied, memorable woman like Rehana.

I cannot resist from quoting another favorite passage: "Rehana regarded the saris and the tried to recall the feelings the had given her, of being at once enveloped and set free, the tight revolution of material around her hips and legs limiting movement, the emty space between blouse and petticoat permitting unexpected sensations -- the thrill of a breeze that has strayed low, through an open window, the knowledge of heat in strange places, the back, the exposed belly. It was bringing together of night and day, the sari: as it concealed the skin, it also released it, so that one body, one woman, would know something of he complications of her sex."

To bridge such beauty into her wordplay seems to come naturally to Tahmima, for the novel is rich in such passages. Perhaps by showing you these passages, I provide a stronger substance to my argument than by any sentences I grafter in the praise of this novel. Herein lies the strength of Anam's writing: it evokes everything from itself, and no critic, no reader can present to you a flavor of this exceptional writing, without directly quoting from this book. Whether you read it as a story of Bangladesh, or of Rehana and her son & daughter, or you read it as an example of modern fiction done well, like me, you will be amazed at depth of feeling and lyrical beauty of this novel. Thank you Tahmima.

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Historical Fiction Done Brilliantly

If it's written properly, historical fiction should be able to personalize an event or an era for a reader. On that criterion alone, A Golden Age is an unqualified success. Anam takes an event that is likely unfamiliar to most readers, and makes it accessible. She does this by developing realistic characters, placing those characters in situations that generate emotions to which the reader can relate, and then suffusing them within timelessly relevant themes (like what are the heights/depths of filial love, what makes up atonement, and what is one's role when society is violently changing). The effectiveness of these actions is heightened by the efficient writing style that Anam uses. The result is a tidy, yet memorable story.

If a writer with several works to their credit had written as self-assured a book as A Golden Age, it would be considered impressive. The fact that this is the debut work from Anam just makes the book more astounding. While one hopes that Anam still has equally memorable works to write, readers should eagerly read the book she has written and savor just how good historical fiction can be.

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A wonderful tribute to all mothers

True, not all mothers go through the life-threatening and self-sacrificial acts that Rehana, the central figure in Tahmima Anam's "A Golden Age", carried out in order to protect her children during the war for independence in Bengladesh. However, Anam has described the feelings and thought processes of Rehana in such a way that any mother can relate to her fear of loss, her desperation, and above all, her love.

Anam uses concise, understated sentences throughout the novel. However, the missing details or adjectives are as powerful as the moments of silence while one awaits to find out the fate of one's child. This language also makes Rehana extremely human, suggesting that all of her actions and decisions, no matter how incredible or difficult, were born out of very basic maternal needs or even instincts. Rehana, who eventually turns into a legendary super-mom figure to all the rebels fighting for Bengladesh independence, admits that her priority was her children rather than the nation. I believe that each mother can find a piece of Rehana in herself, and "A Golden Age" is a celebration of motherhood in its raw form.

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Vivid

A wonderfully written historical fiction, that deals with war, loss, and a country gaining independence. Reading a book about Bangladesh was a first for me,and I can certainly say it has been enlightening. I am eager to read more about this region now. Although the book didn't have a lot of details about the war, the horror people went through there, it was still quite descriptive and vivid.

Good but a trifle light

I like novels that ground great events in the personal lives of the people affected by them. The House of the Spirits is one of my favorite books. However, this book makes the Bangladesh Independence War a little too personal. From the perspective of a widow with two children who are almost adults, the book is more concerned with her affairs and her family dynamics than anything to do with Pakistan and Bangladesh. The fact that the two representatives of Pakistan are the same in-laws that tried to take her children away when they were young seems a severe misstep. The book is going to be squarely on the side of Bangladesh Independence but do the villains have to twirl their mustaches?

That said, the widow protagonist is a likeable character. She loves her children who are actively fighting in the independence movement. She agrees to help the rebels with little consequences. Actually nothing really happens to the widow and her immediate family. The bad stuff happens to other people - friends of her son, lodgers, etc. But these characters aren't in the book long enough to care about so their unfortunate fates aren't very heartbreaking.

And the ending seems to be setting up the book for a sequel, which is fine, but one always feels a little cheated when a book introduces dangling plots threads with the expectation that people will buy the next book.

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