Bangladesh: A Golden Age

 

A Golden Age

by Tahmima Anam
 

 

 

A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, was featured on NPR, a source I trust absolutely for book recommendations.  But the main reason I chose it for Bangladesh is because my friend Liz told me it was one of her all-time favorites.  I really do want suggestions and really will consider them seriously. A Golden Age was right up my alley, so Liz either knows me well or it was a happy coincidence.  I've already mentioned my fondness for first novels, and this is an example of another homerun for a debut piece of fiction.  I also happen to have a special fondness for books set in South Asia.  I don't know why.  I've traveled a lot but not much in that part of the world other than a quick work trip to New Delhi, India where I didn't see much outside of the hotel and a few government offices where my meetings took place.  Something about those countries' cultures seem rich, vibrant, and enduring, and the setting is ripe for exploring themes that I get absorbed in when reading.  This book fit that description precisely and sparked my imagination through its story of a family that is shocked out of its every day normalcy and thrust into a time of war.

 

Rehana is a young woman when she is widowed by her husband's sudden death, too soon after their arranged marriage that generated deep love and two cherished children, Sohail and Maya.  The novel opens with Rehana's loss of custody because she is too poor to provide for them and moves quickly to her determined reversal of fortune when she improves her circumstances and recovers her babies in only a year's time.  From that point on, Rehana devotes herself to them, never contemplating herself or her future as she steers them towards adulthood and independence.  Just as they are on the brink of coming into their own, the country breaks into a civil war that no one saw coming. 

 

The war that provides the backdrop for the novel took place in 1971, when relations between East and West Pakistan, separated by the enormous country of India, became increasingly hostile.  Sohail and Maya, now young adults, are active on their college campus in protesting West Pakistan's refusal to recognize East Pakistan's elected leaders.  Tensions build quickly, and when the Pakistani army begins killing protesters, Sohail and Maya are pulled into a nationalistic fight for East Pakistan's independence.  Rehana is not especially political but has remained as devoted to her children as she vowed to be when they returned home so many years ago.  She, too, becomes pulled in, first by agreeing to house the resistance fighters, and then, just as the nation of Bangladesh is born, by falling in love with one of them.  As a reader, I also felt pulled ... into the history of Bangladesh, the fierce devotion of Rehana's motherhood, Sohail's determination, Maya's frantic search for her role, and ultimately, the awful choice Rehana is forced to make in the end.

 

There are parts of this novel where you'll find yourself drifting along with Anam's dreamy narrative and others where you'll be holding your breath with anticipation of what happens next.  This is one I'd strongly recommend to anyone!