Scenes from Early Life
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, this is the new novel from the author of ‘King of the Badgers’ and the Man Booker-shortlisted ‘The Northern Clemency’.
“I was a baby during the war. We stayed inside for months. All my aunts took turns in feeding me. I couldn't be heard to cry. You see, there were soldiers in the streets. They would have known what a crying baby meant. So I had to be kept silent. No, not everyone came out of the war alive.”
One family’s life, and a nation – Bangladesh – are uniquely created through conversation, sacrifice, songs, bonds, blood, bravery and jokes. Narrated by a young boy born into a savage civil war, ‘Scenes from Early Life’ is a heartbreaking, funny and gripping novel by one of our finest writers.
Reviews
‘An unostentatious tour de force, combining a tender and richly affectionate family memoir with a vividly evoked portrait of town and country life and the story of the birth of a nation. It is full of surprises’ Margaret Drabble
‘Beautifully packed with detail … does for Bangladesh what Salmon Rushdie did for India with Midnight’s Children … It is a remarkable re-creation of a land that most of us know little about’ Sunday Times
‘This is his most purely pleasurable novel to date’ Daily Mail
‘Highly impressive … for all Hensher's accomplished ventriloquism – his ability to inhabit the voice of a Muslim child and a history teacher at the same time – his own voice is not lost … heart-breaking’ Guardian
‘A deeply interesting book … The joins are seamless … It is inventive, clever and loving; a Booker candidate, I would have thought.’ Spectator
‘…this delightful book shows for the first time what Hensher has largely concealed in the past: his heart’ Amanda Craig, Independent on Sunday
About the author
Philip Hensher is a columnist for the Independent, arts critic for the Spectator and a Granta Best of Young British novelist. He has written seven novels, including The Mulberry Empire and the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, and one collection of short stories. He lives in South London.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Hensher's (King of the Badgers) lush novel, somewhat based on his husband Zaved Mahmood's Bengali childhood, the war for control of what became Bangladesh unfolds before a child's eyes. Mahmood's fictional alter ego, Saadi, is born in 1970 to an upper-middle-class family in Dacca and grows up in luxury even as the country deteriorates around him. Hensher's transitions between Saadi's present and the past of his large extended family are so seamless as to be nearly invisible. Saadi's life revolves around his maternal grandparents, figures powerful enough that Saadi, his brother and sisters, and their parents are never far from the lavish compound that is also home to a constant rotation of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Other characters flit in and out of view, most prominently musicians Altaf and Amit, who personify the deep current of artistic expression in Dacca and the bond between men that can extend beyond blood. Their forced separation, when Amit flees to Calcutta, underscores the dire situation in East Pakistan. In relaying the history of the struggle for Bangladeshi independence, Hensher avoids punctiliousness, as the story is filtered through young Saadi, whose innocence in the face of turmoil creates the emotional core of the story.