BOOKS: Tahmima Anam's "A Golden Age"

Tahmima Anam is one of the few Bangladeshi writers to get a big U.S. debut novel. "A Golden Age" has been recently published to rave reviews in America and the U.K. (she's one of five finalists for the Guardian First Book Award). Here's an excerpt from a profile about her by Salil Tripathi in Tehelka:

While there have been three novels on the Bangladesh war written from an Indian perspective — Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, Amitav Ghosh's The Shadow Lines, and Rohinton Mistry's Such A Long Journey — where is the Bangladeshi voice that articulates the horrendous agony of that war, and the bittersweet ecstasy of that freedom?

Make way for Tahmima Anam, then. The remarkable thing about Anam's novel, A Golden Age, which is set to be a trilogy on the Bengal century, is that she was born four years after Bangladesh's independence. Anam comes from a politically active family — her father edits the Daily Star, and her mother runs a human rights NGO in Dhaka. As part of her PhD thesis in Harvard University's anthropology
department, she interviewed hundreds of people who had lived through the war — as soldiers, survivors, victims — to piece together an engrossing narrative that tells, for the first time to an international audience, how Bangladesh saw that tragic year.

She is in the midst of a U.S. tour (details below).

If you are interested in scheduling an interview with Anam or receiving a journalist's review
copy of "A Golden Age," please contact Jane Beirn - Jane.Beirn[at]harpercollins.com  - please note that she will only be able to respond to members of the working press and may not be able to handle the full load of requests. Tell her SAJA sent you.

The full note for journalists is below. Please post your comments, too. 

[Note to book press]

Dear Book Review Editor:

“Dear Husband, I lost our children today.” With these striking opening words, at once devastating and intriguing, Tahmima Anam sweeps us into the unfamiliar landscape of her emotionally arresting first novel, A GOLDEN AGE (Publication date: January 8, 2008). Set during the 1971 War of Independence that would carve the country of Bangladesh from the subcontinent’s landscape, Anam’s remarkably assured debut has the tumult of history as its backdrop, yet it is the primal, complex determination of a mother’s love that drives its narrative. Beginning with a young widow’s unimaginable plight – being forced to give up her children – the compelling story moves forward with the onset of a brutal civil war that brings further sacrifice and loss. It is a story of survival that traces the struggles and irrevocable choices of one woman living amidst the pressures of war, with its inherent fear and grief.

The Bangladesh-born Anam’s achievement in A GOLDEN AGE—the first novel written in English about the Bangladesh war-- is astonishing, not least of all because she powerfully captures a time in her young nation’s troubled history before she herself was born. With stark vividness and emotional honesty, she dramatically depicts the alterations in everyday life and the fluctuations in loyalties that come with political upheaval and the escalation of the genocidal war. Even as confusion and turmoil sweep across the larger landscape, Anam's narrative deftly balances the story of a nation against that of the individual, and A GOLDEN AGE is first and foremost an evocative, intimate family story. 

Tahmima Anam was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh. At age two, she moved with her family to Paris, where were father worked for the U.N, a career that later took them to New York City and Bangkok. When she was sixteen, the family returned to Bangladesh, then Tahmina came to the United States to attend Mount Holyoke and Harvard. She now lives in London. While conducting ethnographic field research for her doctoral thesis in anthropology in her native country, Anam talked with many survivors of the Bangladesh war – student activists, politicians, guerilla fighters, and ordinary citizens. The stories she learned, filtered through her own cultural experiences, were the genesis for A GOLDEN AGE.

A GOLDEN AGE, featured in Publishers Weekly’s first fiction roundup, is a compelling, authentic and beautifully written novel that launches the career of a breathtakingly gifted writer. I hope you agree that novel merits prominent coverage in your pages.

Sincerely,
Jane Beirn
Director of Publicity
Jane.beirn[at]harpercollins.com

ANAM'S TOUR

THURSDAY, JANUARY 10 BOSTON
Harvard Bookstore
@ 7:00 pm, 1256 Massachusetts Avenue

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16 WASHINGTON, D.C.
Politics & Prose
@ 7:00 pm, 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW

THURSDAY, JANUARY 17 NEW YORK
McNally Robinson Bookstore
@ 7:00 pm, 52 Prince Street

TUESDAY, JANUARY 22 SEATTLE
Elliot Bay Book Company
@ 7:00 pm, 1119 8th Avenue, Town Hall

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 23 MOUNTAIN VIEW
Books Inc.
@ 7:30 pm, 301 Castro St.
(650)428-1234

THURSDAY, JANUARY 24 SAN FRANCISCO
Book Passage
@ 1:00 pm, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. 

Reader’s Books (Sonoma)
@ 7:30 pm, 127 E. Napa Street

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 5 MASSACHUSETTS
Odyssey Bookshop
@ 7:00 pm, 9 College Street, The Village Commons

Comments

[Judi Silva]

Remarkable and amazing story! Please read my full review here:

http://www.lokvani.com/lokvani/article.php?article_id=4652

[PhD Thesis Download]

Blogs are good for every one where we get lots of information for any topics nice job keep it up !!!