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A Golden Age: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Tahmima Anam
Publisher: Harper
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy Used: $4.75
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Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 33773
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0061478741
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.92
EAN: 9780061478741
ASIN: 0061478741
Publication Date: January 1, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: * Advance Reader's Edition - softcover * Clean text/good binding
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Product Description
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. But none of the guests at Rehana's party can foresee what will happen in the days and months ahead. For this is 1971 in East Pakistan, a country on the brink of war. And this family's life is about to change forever. Set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh War of Independence, A Golden Age is a story of passion and revolution, of hope, faith and unexpected heroism. In the chaos of this era, everyone—from student protesters to the country's leaders, from rickshaw'wallahs to the army's soldiers—must make choices. And as she struggles to keep her family safe, Rehana will be forced to face a heartbreaking dilemma.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 53 more reviews...
 Would make a great movie, destined to be a classic December 1, 2007
C. Chu
26 out of 29 found this review helpful
War novels like Gone with the Wind, Sophie's Choice, The Book Thief to name a few, capture the stresses and choices that ordinary people are forced to make as the brutality and deprivation of war, occupation, captivity, that change the ordinary circumstances of life into a living nightmare. This book is no different.
The book starts with a prologue where the widow Rehana sits at her husband's grave and tells him that she has lost the children. Because of her poverty, her husband's brother and childless sister-in-law have taken custody of Sohail and Maya, Rehana's 7 and 5 year olds. Even though they are gone for only a year, Rehana feels in her heart the yearning gap of that year and devotes herself totally to her children.
Every year, they have a party where they celebrate the children's return. March 1971 was no different. The party had become a routine, the same guests, Rehana's neighbors, a tenant family from India, the gin-rummy ladies and her daughter's friend. They are celebrating and optimistic of the future. But within a few short weeks, tanks rolled into Dhaka, refugees start streaming out, massacres occur in the city, and her children are drawn into the resistance movement. Life is anything but ordinary when Rehana is drawn into the resistance by her son and daughter. Faced with her guilt at how she lost them for a short while when they were young, and the secret of how she was able to bring them back, Rehana goes along with their efforts, hiding guns and supplies in her home and harboring and caring for a wounded major that at first she regards as a nuisance.
She would like nothing better than to retreat into her routine, her shell, sitting at her late husband's grave and speaking to him, and lying to him and herself about the normalcy of her life, ignoring her daughter's cold shoulder and indifference, and her own guilt at the shameful acts she took to bring her children back. But as the weeks went by, taking care of the major who only greeted her with silent eyes, she begins to open up to him, telling him of her secrets, as if to atone for them and he silently bears her secrets for her.
The war tears Rehana's circle apart, lives tragically destroyed, destinies changed. Rehana meets her former tenant in a refugee camp, a walking shell, with nothing left inside her except sorrow, for the choice she made, she'll pay with tears the rest of her life.
At the end, Rehana herself makes a heartbreaking choice, and even though the war ends a few weeks later, there is no victory, only sorrow in Rehana's heart. As the rest of the city celebrates Rehana speaks to her dead husband, telling him that this time, she did not lose her children.
This is a very poignant novel with plenty of action, raw emotions, youthful enthusiasm, and the painful legacies of war, and the birth of a nation.
 Bokul, laddoo, tiktikis, rui, nomoshkared, thana, hangama, jobakusum, laddoo, tiffin, rojonigondha, jhumka, chini, ador, shipahi December 3, 2007
Julee Rudolf (Oak Harbor, WA USA)
14 out of 19 found this review helpful
In the prologue of A Golden Age, it is March 1959, and widow Rehana Haque informs her dead husband, Iqbal, that she has been forced to hand over their two early-elementary school-aged children to his brother and sister-in-law. The childless couple lives in Lahore, West Pakistan (now Pakistan), which lies a thousand miles from the Haque home in Dhaka, East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Fast-forward to March of 1971, when Rehana is preparing food for her annual celebration of the return of her children, Maya and Sohail, who have reached their late teens. The guest list for the past ten years has been unchanging: a neighbor and her daughter; the tenants of her adjacent second home, Shona, constructed as a rental unit; a Hindu couple and their son; and two gin-rummy playing women friends. Maya has since become a member of the communist party, and Sohail, on the fringes of student political activity, has fallen in love with the neighbor's daughter, who he disappointingly learns is romantically linked to a Pakistani Army officer. With the start of the Indo-Pakistani War and Bangladesh's struggle for independence, the lives of the party-goers and the Haque family members change dramatically with many factors coming into play: the existence of refugees, student uprisings, religious conflict, deception, rape, torture, and murder. Pros: the writing is often good and sometimes great, the historic facts appear to be accurate, and the portrayal of the various characters during the civil war generally holds the reader's interest. Cons: the characters lack charisma and none are particularly likeable or dislikeable; the writing is rarely excellent (the first paragraph of The red-tipped bird excluded); the story could not be described as "compelling;" and the glossary is noticeably absent, leaving readers at a loss in determining the exact meaning of over fifty undefined (Bengali?) words (some can be inferred or narrowed down to a category like "a type of food"). In summary, A Golden Age is an okay, unrecommendable read. Better: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry and Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.
Swept Me Up December 4, 2007
Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States)
12 out of 14 found this review helpful
I became totally swept up in Tahmima Anam's novel, "A Golden Age." The emphasis on the domestic family story that took place during the political unrest. Previously, my knowledge of the country has been most influenced by the George Harrison's The Concert for Bangladesh with the starving refugee picture on the cover. I read in the news about the flooding during monsoon season as happened this year, but otherwise know little about the country. Rehana Haque's story swept me up. It becomes universal and easy to relate to because its largest themes are about family relationship, something we can understand no matter what our culture or religion. Rehana's devotion to her son Sohail and her daughter Maya kept me gripped to the page. During Sohail's joining the resistance and burying guns beneath the rose bushes, it had me biting my nails with suspense. The sequence as Rehana flees to Calcutta and observes her daughter as a devoted and efficient worker highlighted how families change as children grow into adults. Rehana's sparse but tasteful romance with the Major brought just a whisper of joy into the midst of such tragedy. I found Anam's prose sweeping and moving. Bravo!
 So disappointing .... January 14, 2008
Stephen Richmond (Belfast, Maine)
12 out of 19 found this review helpful
With all the great fiction currently gushing from middle Asia, I anticipated a pleasant and culturally edifying reading experience. I was sorely disappointed. While I do feel this author does have some sensibility for story-telling and that she could, under appropriate editiorial guidance, become a viable novelist, at this point her work is stylistically void --- not bad, just non-existent; her characters are little more than flimsy cutouts --- not even cardboard, more like newsprint; and while the pacing of the plot does move and suspense does build, it ultimately just seems to run away out of control. While more careful editing could have cleared up some of these problems like the awkward phrasing and plethora of foreign words without sufficient context to figure out their meanings, I fear the interesting story would still be lost in the author's lack of literary technique.
GENOCIDE IN BANGLADESH 1971 "GOLDEN AGE?" NOT! January 17, 2008
avidreader (calif. USA)
12 out of 18 found this review helpful
I just had tea at my rich friends house in the posh Dhanmondi area of Dhaka and we mildly talked about how bad things were in 1971 in Dhaka,Bangladesh.
That is the taste I have in my mouth after reading this "Historical" novel.
Prelude: I barely survived the heinous Bangladesh Genocide of 1971. My Uncle and Grandfather were mercilessly butchered via bayonets to their guts and their dismembered bodies thrown into the river never to be found again. As an American Bangladeshi, I pre-ordered this book, rather with high anticipation. In all my eagerness, I wanted this to do justice to the rape and murder and mayhem that I was lucky to live through.
The anticipation was that it would be at least of the caliber of Monica Ali's (talented Bangladeshi author) wonderful book "Brick Lane", especially after the reviews I had read.
This is a very lucrative idea but completely misses giving the essence of WAR! WAR is bloody hell, and not "GOLDEN", even if the house that the book is set in is sonar (golden.)
This book keeps on whimpering out. After reading the book and listening to the audio, I was of the opinion (especially with Madhur Jaffrey's narrating) that I had heard a book on current Paki flavored Bangladeshi cooking with war thrown in for good measure.
If this book is to portray the world of genocide, it does not. And it does not because it cannot break out of this Dhanmondi scene aura even with this stretched scene in Augortola, India thrown in.
The flavor of 71 was in the countryside, it was in lakes and rivers around Dhaka with bloated dead Bangladeshi bodies that looked like balloons someone had blown up with crows and vultures sitting on them and ripping out stinking rotting carrion.
For selecting a subject that no one in the English language has written a historical novel, bravo!
Five Starts for cover design!
Five stars for publicity and press.
But, ONE STAR FOR THE REAL FEEL OF BLOODY WAR.
FIVE STARS for a historical novel that no one has yet written in English language.
This is like kicking home a goal in an empty field.
Am I drinking whiskey in today's corrupt world of Dhanmondi, Bangladesh talking about how things were in 1971 or am I reading about three million people killed and 200,000 women raped?
All of these are discussed and yes that's exactly where it fails.
While the effort is there, the effect is not. Why NOT?
In the twenty pages or so of the short story "When Mr. Pirzada Came To Dine" Jhumpha Lahiri captures the tenseness of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 71 better than this does in 265 pages. We constantly are not getting into these "Amoo" and sweet dishes. Call death death, call hell hell. Don't pour sweet gravy on it in a lucrative manner.
I felt after reading this book, that I was sitting in an overstuffed couch in Dhanmondi, Dhaka at a overstuffed and fat and filty rich family's dining room listening to how to cook parata's with eggs in the middle. A third of the book is about various current Banglaeshi dishes. GIVE ME A BREAK!
I must confess that I am an avid fan of Monica Ali, Kiran Desai, Jhumpha Lahiri and V.S. Naipaul in the Indian Genre. So my expectations are above average. Hats off to Monica Ali for "Brick Lane", in my humble opinion still the best English Novel by far of any Bangladeshi.
And what's this with the cliche's Just how exactly does "the smell of rust" smell?
I realize the author was born after 71 and did not spend time in Bangladesh. I was born and brought up in the Dhanmondi area and lived through this bloody hell of nine months that I will never forget as the most horrific experience of my life.
But since it is touted as a historical novel, and rather front loaded with Harvard all over it, sorry to say it is not of that caliber. ( I grew up around Harvard yard.) And maybe the English MFA should have come first, not last. There are just too many heinous errors in wielding the words of English and the book is verbose to a greater extent. Less is best.
I applaud the effort. I cannot in good faith applaud the result.
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