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 ]

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, Tahmima (9 April 2019). " 'For five years we dreaded every meal': my infant son's struggle with food". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077 . Retrieved 7 January 2020.

For Rehana Haque, a young Urdu-speaking widow born in the western 'horn' but living in 1971 in the Bengali East, the chasm dividing Pakistan has long been metaphorical as well as geographic. It was to the West that her two small children had been sent in 1959 after she lost a court appeal to keep them. This loss defines Rehana's life. When war comes in 1971, she discovers that, for all her inability to 'replace her mixed tongue with a pure Bengali one', it is the East that is now 'home'; it is Bangladesh for which she will make the greatest sacrifices. A Golden Age is the first novel of the Bangladesh-born writer Tahmima Anam. [1] It tells the story of the Bangladesh War of Liberation through the eyes of one family. [2] The novel was awarded the prize for Best First Book in the Commonwealth Writers' Prize 2008. It was also shortlisted for the 2007 Guardian First Book Award. The first chapter of the novel appeared in the January 2007 edition of Granta magazine.

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. a b "Tahmima Anam '97 Makes Granta's "Best of Young British Novelists" List". Mount Holyoke College. When I first sat down to write A Golden Age, I imagined a war novel on an epic scale. I imagined battle scenes, political rallies, and the grand sweep of history. But after having interviewed more than a hundred survivors of the Bangladesh War for Independence, I realised it was the very small details that always stayed in my mind- the guerilla fighters who exchanged shirts before they went into battle, the women who sewed their best silk saris into blankets for the reugees. I realised I wanted to write a novel about how ordinary people are transformed by war, and once I discovered this, I turned to the story of my maternal grandmother, Mushela Islam, and how she became a revolutionary.Parveen Haque: Faiz's wife. She cannot have children so works to have Rehana seen as unfit after the death of Iqbal so that she have get custody of Sohail and Maya. [4] Rehana's story shows the often forgotten experience of women in war. Rehana must bear the deepest part of her soul to save her children. This includes giving up the man she grows to love to save her son and herself. This story reveals that while a women's role in war is different, they too do not come out untouched. [1] [5] Publication [ edit ] 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.

As a Muslim woman and mother caught in the midst of a violent conflict, Rehana reminded me of the main character in The Woman from Tantoura, Ruqayya, so I could not help finding this book less impressive than Ashour's superlative novel, although it is certainly affecting and expressive. Although Rehana and her children love poetry, the text doesn't seem infused with it, and the style of narrative structure is conventionally linear and climactic. Rehana is appealing and her viewpoint is realistically embodied. She's never analytical, and not particularly reflective so I construct her character and those of others in her life mainly from their behaviour, which often isn't that illuminating. In general there is one act, one event after another. This is an effective way to communicate the urgent story of the conflict, and I was engaged with Rehana's feelings and relationships. While she is not an especially charismatic lead, her character does offer some delicious surprises... Tahmima Anam’s startlingly accomplished and gripping novel describes not only the tumult of a great historical event … but also the small but heroic struggles of individuals living in the shadow of revolution and war’. Right after the partition in 1947, when East Pakistan and west Pakistan was born, there was too much contrast between two parts of Pakistan in all shape and form, which gradually formed into a very chaotic political situation followed by unequal distribution of resources . It took It's extreme in 1971. From genocide to mass rape we had to go through all sort of degradation to achieve our freedom. Set on that turbulent time span, A Golden Age is the story of Rehana, a middle aged muslim woman and a mother of two grown up child, caught in the midst of violent atmosphere of 71. Anam, choosing the zoomed in scenery of an upper middle class family, brilliantly connected the conflict and struggle at familial level to the much bigger story of revolution. Rehana is not politically active, but she is protective of her children. But what started with an utter maternal instinct soon got the hangover of revolution. It's well observed and executed. But as Anam did not have the first hand experience (as she was born and grew up in foreign country) some emotions felt overly done at some point. Overall It's a good story. A perfect 4 star read. Singh, Amardeep. "Review: Tahmima Anam's A Golden Age". Lehigh University (Blog) . Retrieved 2015-07-22. The novel was immediately praised for both its breadth and its unique point of view. Kamila Shamsie in The Guardian wrote that “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” (March 2007). The New Yorker was impressed by “a striking debut novel” that “deftly weaves the personal and the political, giving the terrors of war spare, powerful treatment while lyrically depicting the way in which the struggle for freedom allows Rehana to discover both her strength and her heart” (January, 2007).

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I love reading about food, and this novel was very satisfying on that score, with every meal at least briefly described. Food is a carrier of emotion and often expresses what can't be said. In a moment of crisis Rehana assesses her stores and decides she can feed her family for five days, then she finds that her Hindu tenant is sheltering a group of twenty or thirty refugees, and she immediately uses all her supplies preparing hot vegetarian food for them. This kind of generosity, characteristic of Rehana, and, in my real life and literary experience, par for the course among Muslims, is striking and moving to me. So it was good to read a novel written by a Bengali, and feel like she has shown me a personal portrait of a family living through, and taking part in, the country's tumultuous birth in 1971. This was Tahmima Anam's first novel, and it won a Commonwealth Prize for best first book. It is an old-fashioned yarn of family love triumphing over adversity, then being further tried by the murky oppressions of rebellion and war, with a good twist to the ending.