A friend gave me a copy of A Golden Age, by Tahmima Anam, as a present a couple of months ago, and I finally got around to reading it this week. A Golden Age, it turns out, is a very strong first novel, written in a direct, natural style, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Anam’s is the first novel put out by a western publisher that I know of to have Bangladesh’s war for independence as its main theme, and for that reason alone, I suspect A Golden Age will become the kind of book that is often taught in college classes on “South Asian Literature” (like the courses I myself get to teach every couple of years). The War is important in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, but only at a great distance (Mistry’s novel is set in Bombay). And a section of Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children deals with this event, but it comes near the end, and Rushdie addresses it in rather lyrical terms — you don’t really get a solid explanation of how the war started or what it was about.

Here, you do. The center of the novel is, of course, the family drama — involving a widow named Rehana and her two grown children, Sohail and Maya. Both of the children are politically oriented, and take a strongly pro-Bangla, pro-Sheikh Mujib position on the events that transpired in 1971. By contrast, their mother Rehana is at first reluctant to make a commitment — though the needs of her children soon force her to inject herself into the conflict. She also begins to come out of her shell emotionally, which is of course what most readers want to see.

Continue reading →

There’s a very interesting short story in this week’s New Yorker, by a new Pakistani writer named Daniyal Mueenuddin. It’s about an electrician working on a large farm in rural Pakistan, more or less taking care of his business until something dramatic happens. I won’t say much about the dramatic thing that happens to Nawabdin (read the story), but here’s a teaser to give you a sense of the writing style:

The motorcycle increased his status, gave him weight, so that people began calling him Uncle and asking his opinion on world affairs, about which he knew absolutely nothing. He could now range farther, doing much wider business. Best of all, now he could spend every night with his wife, who early in the marriage had begged to live not in Nawab’s quarters in the village but with her family in Firoza, near the only girls’ school in the area. A long straight road ran from the canal headworks near Firoza all the way to the Indus, through the heart of the K. K. Harouni lands. The road ran on the bed of an old highway built when these lands lay within a princely state. Some hundred and fifty years ago, one of the princes had ridden that way, going to a wedding or a funeral in this remote district, felt hot, and ordered that rosewood trees be planted to shade the passersby. Within a few hours, he forgot that he had given the order, and in a few dozen years he in turn was forgotten, but these trees still stood, enormous now, some of them dead and looming without bark, white and leafless. (link)

Anyone want to discuss the story as a whole? Did you like Mueenuddin’s writing style? Do you think he does a good job capturing a poor electrician’s point of view? Do you think Nawabdin is a sympathetic character in the end? And finally, what is the story all about?

Incidentally, Mueenuddin also has another story online, at the literary magazine Zoetrope. It’s quite different from “Nawabdin Electrician”; I think it will be interesting to anyone who has been in a serious cross-cultural or interracial relationship. (I’m happy to discuss that story too.) Continue reading →

UPDATE: In case you didn’t know, you got a 48 hour extension– discussion regarding section one commences WEDNESDAY, the 4th.

A few of you have inquired about SM’s newest misadventure, namely the endeavor I promised to start several years ago, so that the four of you who haven’t read my favorite book of all time could do so, with my fervent encouragement.

Alas, we will NOT be starting off our Brown Book Club with a “suitable” anything, our first book is Maximum City and in case you missed the various comments scattered about the blog regarding it, section one of it is “due” this Monday, July 2 this Wednesday, July 4. You were warned.

Why are we doing this, you might not ask? Well, if you’ve spent any amount of time avoiding work, school or familial obligations with the Mutiny, you’ve probably noticed that many of our commenters are an intelligent, well-read bunch. Ek problem: the books that many of us “take for granted” and assume everyone has read, like A Suitable Boy or Interpreter of Maladies or, indeed, Maximum City HAVEN’T been digested. Well, it’s okay to admit that you had your nose buried in For Matrimonial Purposes (or is it?) instead of a tome which won a prestigious prize. There are others who have avoided literature and significant works of non-fiction, just like you. And all of us are going to get through these gosh-darned “important” books together.

On July 2 4th, I’ll put up a post about part one of Maximum City, and then you can each chime in with your thoughts on what we’ve just read. We’ll finish the two remaining sections by the week after, by July 9. It’s roughly the same number of pages, per week.

Thank you to Chachaji, who inspired this brief, yet necessary post with this comment:

BTW, is this still on, or have we moved it forward by a week? I just got my copy of Maximum City yesterday, and read a few random pages out of order last night. Just now I discovered it does have 3 sections! Anna, will you be flagging us off, and give us a suggested reading schedule, so we can get started in earnest? [link city]

Do I need to “move it forward by a week?” SLACKERS.

No, really, let’s hash out details below, so all of our planning and disagreement occurs on ONE thread. Continue reading →

The middle of an academic’s winter break is the perfect time to be saddled with irritating errands. In this case, I had been commissioned to stay home on a Friday afternoon so a SatTV (fake name) technician could fix the problems we’ve been having with our Hindi-language channels.

SatTV is essentially a hive of incompetent technicians. A previous technician had come a month earlier. He spent five minutes looking around, cursed the installation guy that had preceded him, and declared there was nothing he could do. Though Yahya too would also accomplish nothing in the three hours he spent in my house, he was at least more interesting to talk to.

When he told me his name, I said, “oh, like the famous Pakistani general” (fortunately, I did not say “dictator”). He was impressed, it seemed, by my knowledge of history, and it started us on a good footing. He said he was from Sialkot, and industrial town in a Punjabi speaking area. Yahya himself was Punjabi, though to my relief he seemed perfectly happy to speak in English — his English was confident and effective, though lacking in the grammatical niceties that come with years of English-medium schooling. To begin with, he came to the U.S. fifteen years ago, to work as a chef. Yes, a chef: he said he had studied at a culinary institute in Lahore, and then worked as an executive chef at a “five star hotel” there before coming to Philadelphia with his wife. Continue reading →

Red Snapper advises us that Kiran Desai was awarded the MAN Booker Prize for her novel The Inheritance of Loss just moments ago. Here is the official press release:

Chair of the judges, Hermione Lee, made the announcement at the awards dinner at the Guildhall, London, which was broadcast live on the BBC 10 O’ Clock News. Harvey McGrath, Chairman of Man Group plc, presented Kiran Desai with a cheque for £50,000.

Hermione Lee comments,

“We are delighted to announce that the winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2006 is Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness. The winner was chosen, after a long, passionate and generous debate, from a shortlist of five other strong and original voices.”

Over and above her prize of £50,000, Kiran Desai is guaranteed a huge increase in sales and recognition worldwide. Each of the six shortlisted authors, including the winner, receives £2,500 and a designer-bound edition of their book.

The judging panel for the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction is: Hermione Lee (Chair), biographer, academic and reviewer; Simon Armitage, poet and novelist; Candia McWilliam, award-winning novelist; critic Anthony Quinn; and actor Fiona Shaw.

The press release reminds us that Kiran Desai is 35 and the daughter of author Anita Desai. Also, according to the release, Kiran is currently a student in the creative writing program at Columbia. I’m sure her classmates aren’t intimidated! Salman Rushdie calls Kiran “a terrific writer,” which is more than he had to say about John Updike.

Seriously though: Warm and sepia-tinted congratulations to Kiran Desai and let’s all run out and read her book. Continue reading →

Amitava Kumar is currently at Vassar College, and Salman Rushdie was recently scheduled to be a guest speaker. Amitava, as an accomplished critic and essayist, was suggested by the college to introduce Rushdie, but Rushdie vetoed it [see update below]:

Salman Rushdie came to Vassar College earlier this week to deliver a lecture for the Class of 2010–but he made it clear to the organizers that he would cancel if I was involved in his visit. I had earlier been asked to introduce him, and then, well, I was disinvited. Mr Rushdie and I have never met, although I have heard him speak several times. I presume his dislike of me has to do with essays like these that I have written about him in the past. (link)

The essay Amitava links to is a long, partly sunny and partly sour critique of Rushdie, ending with a review of Shalimar the Clown. I think Amitava’s best criticism is probably the following: Continue reading →