A Golden Age

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The book is more about the personal life of Rehana Haque and her son Sohail and daughter Maya than about the happenings of 1971. The behavior of the characters that Tahmima portrayed throughout the book are simply illogical and out of consistency. The territories were situated on either side of India as the book phrases "a pair of horns" on either side of India. What sense did it make,' its people wonder in this novel, 'to have a country in two halves, poised on either side of India like a pair of horns?

Anam is great on description of food, Rehana is an excellent cook and the feast is described in loving detail. 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. 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. 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.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 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. I've had this book since I found it on paperbackswap in 2012, so it's been on my shelf for a while too. 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. 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.

Sohail and Maya were born in Dhaka and their native tongue is Bengali and have an easy loyalty to Bangladesh.This historical fiction novel centers the point of view of Rehana Haque, a widowed mother who struggles through Bangladesh Liberation War as both her children become increasingly involved with the war efforts. Sadly, I don’t know enough about the historical events to comment on the historical accuracy, but Anam tells an engaging story. 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. The language, the pace and the restraint from providing too much graphic detail added up to make this a surprisingly easy read for me.