A Golden Age

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The power of holding silence: Making the workplace work for women | Tahmima Anam | TEDxManchester - YouTube". www.youtube.com . Retrieved 15 May 2022. 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. 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? 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. Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan before its fight for independence from Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War. [8]

In 2022, Anam gave a TEDx talk entitled "The Power of Holding Silence: Making the Workplace Work for Women". [26] That same year, Anam's debut, A Golden Age, was chosen for the Queen’s jubilee book list, a list of 70 books from across the Commonwealth marking the seven decades of her reign. [27] Personal life [ edit ] The author Tahmima Anam was born in Bangladesh, but grew up traveling around the world due to the work of her father, Mahfuz Anam, who is the editor of The Daily Star. [6]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. Roy, Amit (5 June 2011). "Eye on England: Good Author". The Telegraph. Kolkota. Archived from the original on 14 August 2014 . Retrieved 17 October 2012. a b c d e f g h i j k l Anam, Tahmima (2009). A golden age: a novel. New York: Harper Perennial. ISBN 978-0061478758. 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! 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.

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. [4] [5] The book starts with the death of Rehana's husband and losing then regaining the custody of her children, and then fast forwards to the start of the war where Rehana struggles again to hold on to her children. [4] Rehana struggles with understanding passionate nationalism of her children and finding her own personal identity outside of being a mother and where her sense of nationalism fits into that identity. The book ends 16 December 1971, the day that the treaty is signed and Bangladesh gained their independence. [1] Main characters [ edit ] Anam's first novel, A Golden Age, revolves around a family headed by a widow named Rehana — a character inspired by Anam's grandmother and the small but remarkable role she played in that war. Singh, Amardeep. "Review: Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age". Lehigh University (Blog) . Retrieved 2015-07-22.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. a b Thorpe, Vanessa; Haider, Mahtab (26 November 2006). "New fiction star taps Bangladeshi roots". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 2018-12-16. In 2021, her novel The Startup Wife was published by Canongate Books. It was selected as a Best Book of 2021 by the Observer, Stylist, Cosmopolitan, Red and the Daily Mail, and shortlisted for the Comedy Women in Print Prize 2022. [23] [24] [25] 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!!!

a b "Tahmima Anam '97 Makes Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists" List". Mount Holyoke College. 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’? 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.

A Golden Age

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. Born in 1975 into the Bangladesh cultural elite and educated internationally, Anam is too young to have experienced her homeland’s drive for independence and war with Pakistan in 1971. Her chosen mission in her two acclaimed novels to date has therefore been to present the story of her parents’ generation for a new audience. The research for both her books comes partly from interviews she conducted with family members and Bangladeshis who experienced the conflict.

The next day 26 March 1971 the Mukti Bahini called for independence from Pakistan and establishment of the new country of Bangladesh. [5] The civil war began in full force. [5] [10] 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. 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). 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. Growing up with two parents that had been involved with the Bangladesh Liberation War, patriotism was important to Anam's family. This theme is reflected in the book. [12]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. Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan and full of questions about its identity. '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?' East and West spoke different languages, followed different religions, lived different lives. West enjoyed political and economic supremacy; East was a poor relation, neglected even during the cyclones and floods that plagued its delta planes. Some kind of fissure was almost inevitable. Some of the finest moments of the novel are its quietest - Rehana hearing Nina Simone for the first time, her voice "a thousand years of sorrow"; the desolation of a half-built house during the monsoons with "tadpoles swimming like lines of ink" in the pool which should have been a tiled floor; beautiful evocations of Bengal's countryside and its hill stations. The novel moves from pain to beauty, and often treads a line between the two. Sohail, the dreamer-turned-warrior, asks of the struggle for independence: "How can it be the greatest and the very worst thing we have ever done?" Dear Sisters,' she imagines writing to her family, suddenly the enemy. 'Our countries are at war. We are on different sides now ... you see how much I belong here and not to you.' As a mother, she is circumscribed by the 'yawning, cyclic, inexhaustible need' for the son and daughter who were taken from her. 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.