A Golden Age is a novel that brings women to the fore, exploring what it means for them to be in a country at war, without reducing them to victims, but focusing on “the unexpected ways that women are heroic” (Anam 2011b). The narrative draws inspiration from the story of the rifles she let soldiers hide in her garden and from survivors’ stories.

In A Golden Age (2007), the first installment of a trilogy that encompasses the Bangladesh War of Independence and its aftermath, Anam pays homage to her maternal grandmother’s involvement in the war. Tahmima Anam is not of the generation of writers who experienced the nine months of conflict that followed Operation Searchlight and led to the proclamation of Bangladesh. But as the results of the elections were canceled, the country found itself in an exceptional situation, governed by martial law, the Pakistani army at war with its own people. A few months before, East Pakistan had won significant political representation at the National Assembly of Pakistan with the Awami League and the leadership of Sheikh Mujib. 1On March 25, 1971, with Operation Searchlight led by Tikka Khan under the command of President Yahya Khan, East Pakistan was swept into a bloody genocide that US consul general, Archer Blood, reported to Washington, but that remained on the margins of history, a footnote in the Cold War.

A golden age tahmima anam sparknotes