‘Age’ of disappointment
A Golden Age by Tahmima Anam is one of those books you want to like because it tackles something enormous and little exposed, the Bangladesh genocide and war of independence. Age is being marketed as lit fic, but it’s really a young adult book written at around a 10th-grade level. The author’s skill is not commensurate with the novel’s theme. Subtle thoughts are never left unmolested; they’re implied, then said outright, then hammered in once again. The authorial gaze is averted around dark, gruesome or naughty bits, the snip of self-censorship. This G-rated book implies sex and torture but confuses prudishness for tact. The handful of passages where the author attempts poetic flourish rarely rise to believability. Instead you get the sense she’s attempting notes far beyond her range.
Worse, A Golden Age is keyhole lit, centered on a conservative, narrow-minded character. And it’s auntie lit. Like the Charlie Wilson’s War movie, it’s all about someone very peripheral to the battle, the mother of a guerrilla. Would you rather read of war from a general’s perspective, or that of an auntie who spends her time making pickles and worrying ineffectually? Yes, this is intended as an intimate, human perspective on the war; yes, it all depends on the quality of the writing. But all else being equal, give me the POV of the person in the thick of the action any day rather than one hearing reports third-hand from off-field.
The politics in the book are skewed. You hear why the war started, Sheikh Mujibur’s win in the Pakistan elections, but you never hear of how it ends. A chapter ends and then mysteriously, in December 1971, it’s all over. Is this omission in service of story? Or does it cater to modern, Islamic Bangladesh’s embarrassment at requiring India’s assistance in its war of independence?
There’s a grand story to be told here, but nowhere in the book is the scale of Gen. Yahya’s genocide, the Blood telegram, Nixon, the threat to station American aircraft carriers off the coast. All you’ve got is a lonely mother watching her children go off to war, falling in like with a soldier she quarters. Though domestic tales can be wonderfully subtle human stories, this one isn’t. And even in the most skilled of hands, The English Patient is a tough act to follow.
You will extract much from this book — this era of Bangla history is so little written about in fiction, you can’t help but learn. For example, the Pakistani military had the chauvinist idea that Bengalis are intrinsically not a martial race. (One which my Bong playwright buddy happily endorses.) But getting there will not tax your literary imagination. If I recall correctly from the reading, the book started out as an anthropology thesis on oral histories about the war. The novel did not flourish in the transition.
Comments are closed.