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! 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. As young widow Rehana Haque awakes one March morning, she might be forgiven for feeling happy. Today she will throw a party for her son and daughter. In the garden of the house she has built, her roses are blooming, her children are almost grown, and beyond their doorstep, the city is buzzing with excitement after recent elections. Change is in the air. Book Tour is a Web feature and podcast. Each week, we present leading authors of fiction and nonfiction as they read from and discuss their work.

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).

One of the novel's great strengths is its decision to show war from the perspective of the women who cannot join the armed resistance and must instead find a way to live in the limbo world of a city in curfew, where daily life must continue its deceptive normality even while there are guns buried beside the rose-bushes, and visits to the Urdu-speaking butcher are fraught with political tension because he's believed to be a collaborator. Rehana is herself an Urdu-speaker with Bengali as her second language, and her relationship to the language of Ghalib's poetry, which is also the language of the oppressor, is sensitively drawn. a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Anam, Tahmima (2007). A Golden Age. United Kingdom: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-7195-6010-1. I had read earlier, in an interview, that the inspiration for the story was the real-life events of the writer's grandmother during the war. Tahmima Anam has beautifully created an atmosphere of war and instability throughout the book. One of the main things you will notice while reading the book is that the writer always tells us how the environment in the book smells. It actually helped me to be involved with the story and its settings.

Now she is from Harvard, so it becomes her responsibility to write a novel to keep alive the University tradition. Like uncle Ben of Peter Parker, we also can say, With big degree comes big responsibility to write a book! Now what to do! When she has a Bengali origin, why should not she encash the year of 1971? For the writers that year was ‘Annus mirabilis!’The book opens with a description of a party that Rehana was hosting. The main item was biriyani and as a sweet dish there was jilapi at the end. Wait, Jilapi! Why? In my whole life I have never seen that jilapi is given as the sweet dish. Have you?

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. 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] Rheannon, Francesca (21 September 2011). "Tahmima Anam: The Good Muslim & A Golden Age". Writer's Voice . Retrieved 2018-12-17. I suppose the idea I had was that people brought their histories, their personal histories, their struggles, their familial struggles into that war," she says.a b c d e Burton-Hill, Clemency. "And ne'er the twain shall meet". The Guardian . Retrieved 2015-07-22.