I
Told in spare, straightforward prose, history unfolds in small and largeways in this accomplished novel.
Anam’s narrative explores the lives of three people—Rehana, and her children Maya and Sohail—as the ’71 war descends upon them, at first gradually, and then inexorably changing their lives. Sohail, non-violent by nature, is drawn into the armies of the young; Maya, a stronger political being, makes do with the avenues of resistance open to her.
But it is Rehana’s story—told in spare, straightforward prose—that lies at the heart of the novel: supporting her son, trying to understand her daughter, caught in a situation of looking after a wounded army man (a faint echo of The English Patient here), trying to keep alive her dead husband’s memory, and amidst all this, wondrously finding love, and then making the ultimate, difficult, impossible choice. Thus are small lives profoundly changed by history, and thus does history itself unfold in small and large ways in this accomplished novel.