It also effectively illustrates the strength of maternal love, and the lengths a woman will go to to protect her children. It provides an account of the heart-breaking decisions that families may be forced to make in wartime, about sacrifice and the toll of conflict and the particular cruelties of civil war. This emotive book covers a wide canvas, from Dhaka to Lahore to Calcutta. It also inevitably explores the regrets, disillusionment and compromises of middle age. The civil conflict is the backdrop to the story of Rehana as she tries to do the best for her family, and to keep her children safe, while acknowledging that her freedom fighter son Sohail and idealistic daughter Maya, young adults now, are determined to live by their own principles, no matter what the cost. But civil conflict is brewing, a conflict that will lead to Bangladeshi independence, but will also lead to terrible violence and countless individual tragedies. Anam is great on description of food, Rehana is an excellent cook and the feast is described in loving detail.
This, her debut novel, is set in 1971 in East Pakistan, where Rehana Haque, a young widow, is throwing a party. I’m not convinced the collection has aged that well, but it’s an audacious idea.Īnam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh (and now lives in the UK).
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. First published in 2007, Tahmima Anam’s intimate civil war tale A Golden Age won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for the Best First Book and was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.
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