Born in Bangladesh, Tahmima Anam grew up mostly in the West. But she wove family stories of her native land and its independence war into the fabric of her novel A Golden Age. Khan hide caption toggle caption Zahedul I. Khan The child of a diplomat, Tahmima Anam grew up far away from her native Bangladesh. Nokia Multimedia Player For Windows 7. But all her life, she heard about that country's war for independence — which took place before she was born — from her Bengali parents and their friends.

A Golden Age is the first novel of the Bangladesh-born writer Tahmima Anam.[1] It tells the story of the Bangladesh War of Independence through the eyes of one family. [2] The novel was awarded the prize for Best First Book. A Golden Age: A Novel [Tahmima Anam] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Rehana Haque, a young widow, blissfully prepares for the party she will host. Jan 27, 2008 About halfway through Tahmima Anam’s first novel, the story slows for a weather report, an evocation of August in the author’s native Bangladesh.

And when she decided to write a novel about Bangladesh, Anam says, she couldn't imagine writing about anything else except the war. 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. Initially, though, Anam had a different kind of book in mind. When the Everyday Is Epic 'I thought I would write a sort of epic,' she says — 'a very muscular narrative that had battle scenes and political rallies and all the sorts of big moments that you see in war novels. But actually, when I sat down to write, I ended up really thinking about what it was like for ordinary people to survive that war.'

To research the story, Anam interviewed people who had lived through the war. In 1971, long-simmering hostilities between East and West Pakistan began boiling over. Separated from West Pakistan by language, culture and the expanse of India, East Pakistan chafed under the dominance of the West. When East Pakistan's Awami party won an overwhelming victory in national elections, leaders in the West refused to allow a new parliament to convene. East Pakistani nationalists took to the streets to protest. Anam's mother, Shaheen, was 19 years old at the time.

'We had no inkling that we were going to war,' Shaheen Anam says. 'But we thought if we demonstrate, if we protest, if we have rallies. We are going to be able to convince them. So every day we were out in the street, we were talking, we were singing, we were having meetings, and it was very, very exciting.' Commencement Program Booklet.

Then, on the 25th day of March, the Pakistani army moved in and began indiscriminately killing protestors. Shahidullah Khan, a young man at the time, was stunned and angered by the massacre. 'We Have to Liberate This Country' 'I saw dead bodies and blood all over Dhaka,' says Khan, a friend of the Anam family.

'And we decided, four friends to go out — four friends together. We went out, and there was only one motto at that time: We have to liberate this country.' One of those four friends was Tahmima Anam's uncle, Shaheen's older brother. He asked his mother if the resistance fighters could stay at her house, and if they could hide weapons in her garden. And so Tahmima Anam's grandmother provided food and shelter for the young fighters.