A Golden Age

A deeply moving debut novel about a mother's all-consuming love for her two children, set against the backdrop of war and terror.

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book

Rehana Haque, a young widow transplanted to the city of Dhaka in East Pakistan, is fiercely devoted to her adolescent children, Maya and Sohail. Both become fervent nationalists in the violent political turmoil which, in 1971, transforms a brutal Pakistani civil war into a fight to the death for Bangladeshi independence. Fair-minded and intensely protective of her family, but not at all political, Rehana is sucked into the conflict in spite of herself.

A story of passion and revolution, of family, friendship and unexpected heroism, A Golden Age depicts the chaos of an era and the choices everyone—from student protesters to the country's leaders, and rickshaw wallahs to the army's soldiers—must make. Rehana herself will face a cruel dilemma; the choice she makes is at once heartbreaking and true to the character we have come to love and respect.

"Eventful, exotic, intelligent, and romantic." —Entertainment Weekly

"Spellbinding . . . . [Tahima] Anam has written a story about powerful events. But it is her descriptions of the small, unheralded moments . . . that truly touch the heart." —San Francisco Chronicle

"By painting that portrait of maternal love, both powerful and overpowering, against the backdrop of a young generation's love for a new country, Anam gives her story an extra layer of poignancy." —San Jose Mercury News