The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam – review | Books | The Observer

A brother and sister clash over ideology in this powerful and insightful novel set in 70s Bangladesh

Tahmima Anam: her second novel’s ‘insight places it in the highest league’. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Independence has cruel consequences, and these are brought into focus by Tahmima Anam’s second novel, which follows the success of her debut, A Golden Age, set during the turmoil of Bangladesh‘s 1971 war of independence. The Good Muslim, set in the aftermath of that conflict, is a devastating account of two siblings, Maya and Sohail, negotiating life in a new nation haunted both by the past and by chilling presentiments of the future.

1. Good Muslim
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This haunting is felt most keenly by Maya, a doctor returning home after some years away. Anam describes Maya’s memories with an unflinching realism: “She remembered the sight of dead men with their hands tied behind their backs, their faces lapped with blood, and she remembered every day she had worked in the camps, scooping bullets out of men with nothing but a spoon and a hunter’s knife.”

Maya and Sohail and their relatives have all been radicalised in their own ways, invaded and transformed by interests much larger than themselves. Anam’s intelligent style is perfectly suited to the dissection of this new, altered Bangladesh, a country of hypocrisies, doubts and strange metamorphoses. The greatest shock for progressive Maya is encountering her beloved brother, who has sunk his horror at his own involvement in the war into the comforts of extreme religious conservatism. As the novel progresses, the two characters become more entrenched in their positions and their final clash of principles is shattering yet inevitable.

Maya’s medical knowledge, her worldliness and her independence as a woman give her a clear view of the injustices and ignorance around her. Although Maya is a strong counterpoint to the gendered abuse which is one of the themes of the book, Anam is too realistic to make her a blazing, all‑saving heroine. One of Maya’s most tormenting realisations is that there are some perpetrators who abuse not only with impunity but with the full support of society.

All this may make The Good Muslim sound heavy – but it isn’t. Its clarity, alacrity and succession of brief, vivid scenes give the characters room to breathe. Maya is immediately impressive but Anam’s acuity cuts deepest in her treatment of Sohail. In this young man, nationalism, machismo, conservatism and denial mix to create a tragic archetype. His fervour is a crutch for his trauma, guilt and grief, his certainty built on shaky foundations. His is a flimsy, self-constructed identity which eventually must crash down.

The Good Muslim is about a national victory that does not feel like a victory, a liberation that is a damnation for many. Anam is one of a generation of writers with a subcontinental heritage whose themes are politicised and universal. The Good Muslim uses a specific history to identify issues that resonate in places and times far beyond post-independence Bangladesh, and it is this pertinence that makes The Good Muslim not just an interesting novel but an important one.

Book Review – The Devil’s Light – By Richard North Patterson – NYTimes.com

 

 

Nothing solidifies the reputation of a spy novelist so much as prescience. Graham Greene’s “Quiet American” appeared only a year after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, and before American advisers had been sent to Vietnam in large numbers. Four years before the Cuban missile crisis, with Fulgencio Batista still in power, Greene wrote another novel, this one about possible secret military installations in Cuba. As for Ian Fleming, his vision of nonstate terrorist groups seeking nuclear weapons remains the most frightening and relevant aspect of the James Bond series.

Richard North Patterson would probably admit he does not hope his latest “entertainment,” as Greene would have called it, is prescient in the least. It tells the tale of Al Qaeda’s plan to set off a nuclear bomb on Sept. 11, 2011. Indeed, all that stands between a solemn anniversary and Osama bin Laden’s evil designs are Brooke Chandler, a patriotic C.I.A. agent, and his mentor, Carter Grey, now retired. The plot sends Chandler to the Middle East, and the narrative alternates between Chandler’s attempts to uncover the bomb’s location, and the workings of Al Qaeda, specifically a dastardly operative taking orders from Bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri. (Bin Laden’s appearance in “western” Pakistan in the prologue might date the book a bit, but Patterson’s portrayal of the terrorist leader directing plots and speaking portentously is in keeping with the discoveries following his death in Abbottabad last month.)

From before Fleming’s time, villains have always been more complex than heroes, and that’s true here as well. Patterson doesn’t have any huge insights into the two leaders of Al Qaeda, but they are certainly livelier than Chandler, who has all the dullness of Tom Clancy’s stick figures. Patterson avoids the right-wing talking points that animate Clancy’s stories, but the result is still tedious. We are given hints that Chandler’s interests extend beyond his world of intrigue and espionage — on his night table sit a translation of “War and Peace” and some Arabic poetry — but the narrative never allows him much in the way of an inner life. His relationship with an Israeli woman brings the book almost to a halt; their romantic conversations revolve around topics like the political history of her homeland. “A right-wing Israeli had assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, our greatest hope for peace. So we had an election: Rabin’s successor, Peres, who also favored peace, against Netanyahu, a man supported by fanatics.” Chandler undoubtedly finds this kind of talk sexier than the reader will.

Patterson, who has written several best-selling political thrillers, is a solid storyteller who doesn’t allow nuanced characterization to interrupt his well-worked plots. The merit of his books, and what makes them occasionally lugubrious, is his effort to show off his research. “The Israelis provided us with a salutary lesson: another invasion in 1996, this time to wipe out Hezbollah. The result was a mass exodus of Shia from the south and the indiscriminate killing of civilians by the I.D.F., whether by accident or design. The worst was when the I.D.F. shelled Qana, where the U.N. was sheltering Shia refugees.” This is Chandler speaking, and he is only one of Patterson’s characters who enjoy the monologue. We receive lectures on almost every “hot” topic, from the history of Al Qaeda and Hezbollah to the political situations in Pakistan and Lebanon. There are even references to WikiLeaks. Writers as distinct from Patterson as Rebecca West have used this narrative approach to excellent effect, but here it feels painfully choreographed. Patterson can write, and he does seem to have an interest in the world as it exists. Perhaps next time he will tell us tomorrow’s news rather than yesterday’s.

Available at Liberty Books

Broken Republic, By Arundhati Roy – Reviews, Books – The Independent

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

From novelist to activist: Arundhati Roy at a protest in New Delhi

In the years since Arundhati Roy won the 1997 Booker Prize for her debut novel, The God of Small Things, she has become the anti-globalisation mascot in India and abroad with her strident opposition of the Indian state, free market economics, the war on terror, and much else. Her prose is vivid and sometimes poetic: witty wordplay interspersed with biting satire that riles India’s middle class, the wealthy, and the elite.

But as her appeal rises abroad, she has become increasingly irrelevant at home. Sincere anti-poverty activists find her shrillness exasperating, with some arguing privately that her writing about a cause is a distraction, shifting the focus to herself, and delaying, if not damaging, the prospect of a solution. Roy doesn’t like compromised half-measures, but others have different views of what constitutes the best solution. Her fans abroad, who have little personally at stake in India, applaud her rapturously, so making her more marginalised among nationalistically-minded Indians.

The exasperation comes from the fact that what Roy describes is often an accurate description of a slice of the reality, but her prose has little room for layered nuances and granularity. It makes her critique almost comic-book like, with sharply edged “good” and “evil” forces. In her latest collection of essays, Broken Republic, Roy rightly points out the abysmal treatment of India’s indigenous people who live in the tribal belt, which is rich with minerals and abounds with Maoists. But she is wrong in seeing those amoral nihilists – the Maoists – as harbingers of a better future. That’s a dehumanised worldview.

True, the millions of tribals (as indigenous people are called in India) have been neglected and exploited. And India now wants mining companies to invest there. If the past is any indication, it will cause a massive upheaval, disrupting traditional lifestyles, displacing communities, with the abuse of many human rights.

Roy is a brilliantly articulate cheerleader for the Maoists, who claim to be fighting for the tribals. In perhaps a quarter of India’s districts, the state doesn’t have much control. Paramilitary forces have been deployed, and Maoists have launched spectacular strikes, killing many in the security forces.. In retaliation, politicians and landlords have created a vigilante militia to take on the Maoists.

That’s a grim scenario, and can end in tragedy, but Roy absolves the Maoists. She sees their violence entirely as a reaction when all other means have failed, even portraying them as green egalitarian warriors fighting to preserve a pristine life. In that Manichean world, the tribals and Maoists are one; and anyone against Maoists is against the tribals, therefore for the state, and hence complicit in the abuses.

In her first essay, the Indian home minister P Chidambaram must be colluding with mining companies, since before he became a minister, when he was a corporate lawyer some of the companies were his clients. When mining shares rise after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh calls the Maoist threat India’s gravest security challenge, she sees causality in that coincidence. In her second essay, she travels through Maoist territory, and makes the Maoists almost as likeable as characters in the film Avatar. She notes, but doesn’t condemn, their use of child soldiers, nor their summary show trials against “informants”, some of whom are put to death.

But there is hope. In her third essay we see an introspective Roy, slightly disillusioned by Maoist rhetoric. She no longer ridicules Gandhi; now she cites him approvingly. Perhaps her education has begun. Roy sees India’s upwardly-mobile aspirants as morally compromised.

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad – review | Books | The Guardian

Border crossings … a guerrilla from the Marri tribe prepares rockets for firing on a Pakistani troop outpost, 2006. Photograph: John Moore/Getty Images

Jamil Ahmad, a Pakistani civil servant, began his career in Baluchistan in the 1950s. Most civil servants posted to such a remote area as Baluchistan, North Western Frontier Province, or the tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghan border would lobby hard for a posting in the bigger cities of Pakistan, but Ahmad stayed on, spending several decades working as an administrator. Unlike most officials from the plains, Ahmad learned Pashto, the language most tribes along the dreaded frontier speak. Along the way, he took notes, and by 1974 had turned his impressions into a collection of inter-linked stories.

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Ahmad stashed away his first draft, leaving it untouched for three decades. In 2008, he was 75, retired from the civil service, and living in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad. Two young Pakistani women, a Lahore-based bookseller, Aysha Raja, and a Karachi-based columnist and editor, Faiza Sultan Khan, called on Pakistani authors to submit stories for a competition. Ahmad’s younger brother insisted that he must show them his work. After reworking the 35-year-old manuscript, Ahmad sent it to Khan, who championed it, and showed it to an editor at Penguin.

Two years later, Jamil Ahmad made his debut as the 78-year-old writer of The Wandering Falcon, one of the finest collections of short stories to come out of south Asia in decades.The Wandering Falcon begins in Baluchistan in the early 1950s, as a tribal chief’s daughter married to an impotent man elopes with her father’s servant and finds shelter in an isolated fort manned by a few dozen lonely soldiers. Ahmad conveys the fear and desperation of the lovers as he describes them being offered water on their arrival at the fort gates after an arduous trek. “As she sensed water, she started sucking his hand and fingers like a small animal. All of a sudden, she lunged towards the bucket, plunged her head into it and drank with long gasping sounds until she choked.”

The couple find shelter in an abandoned corner of the fort. A son is born, and they raise the child in a hidden corner for six years until the Siahpad, their tribe, sends men in pursuit of them. The couple and their son run for safety but are hunted down, and two stone shrines are raised over their graves as a sign of Siahpads’ revenge. Tor Baz, the boy left to die, is adopted by Baluch rebels fighting the Pakistani government and grows up to be the wandering falcon of the title, a boy with no fixed identity, moving between precarious worlds full of humanity, courage, cruelty, and above all poverty so dire that survival seems to be the greatest virtue.

Although the tribal areas of Pakistan have dominated the news and opinion pages for years, rarely has a writer shown greater empathy for its people, or brought such wisdom and knowledge to writing about a terrain largely inaccessible to journalists and writers. The Pak-Afghan frontier has become synonymous with terrorists and the mechanised war of drones. The ambitions and interests of nation states – America, Pakistan, Afghanistan – have rendered invisible the Baluch. Jamil’s stories return the humanity to this devastated region. His characters defy the much-used categories of our times: moderates or extremists, Salafis or Sufis, pro or anti-American. Their concerns are often ordinary, mostly difficult struggles for a life of dignity and love.

The Wandering Falcon is also a blistering critique of the ruthless ways of nation states, as they seek to impose artificially constructed borders on older, more fluid worlds. In one of the most powerful stories, “The Death of Camels”, Ahmed describes the world of a tribe of cattle herders who moved their flocks from the Afghan mountains in winter to the plains of Pakistan in summer. One autumn, as the state of Pakistan tries to enforce its borders, a caravan of these nomads faces armed Pakistani soldiers who order them to return to the tribal territory. Curt orders are issued through amplifiers. Guns are pointed. A woman, unfamiliar with the ways of modern states, moves forward with some camels, carrying a copy of the Koran on her head, assured the holy book would protect her. “They had hardly gone fifty yards when two machine guns opened up from either side and mowed down the camels. The firing was indiscriminate. Men, women, and children died. Gul Jana’s belief that the Koran would prevent tragedy died too.”

The clash between a people governing themselves through old tribal codes and the modern governments permeates Ahmad’s stories. Another story, “A Point of Honour”, shows a group of Baluch rebels, who had taken in the six-year-old Tor Baz after his parents’ murder, debating over a Pakistani government pamphlet announcing an offer of talks. The rebels, led by an old, half-blind chief, march proudly to an outpost of governance for talks, but end up being disarmed and sentenced to death for murder.

“There was complete and total silence about the Baluchis, their cause, their lives, and their deaths. No newspaper editor risked punishment on their behalf . . . No politician risked imprisonment: they would continue to talk of the rights of the individual, the dignity of man, the exploitation of the poor, but they would not expose the wrong done outside their front door,” Ahmad writes. Sadly, his words continue to ring true. This collection is reminiscent of the work of two masters of the short story: Saadat Hussain Manto’s stories of India’s violent partition and Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalary stories. The power and beauty of these stories are unparalleled in most fiction to come out of south Asia.

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Book Review – “Those in Peril” by Wilbur Smith

Wilbur Smith has written 33 books and I have read them all. The minute I see a new book from him in a book shop I buy it straight away. His latest book is called “Those in Peril” and is not based on any of the dynasties that he has written about in the past.

“Those in Peril” is basically about Somali pirates. This is not one of Smith’s best offerings, but is for the most part a very good yarn that his fans will enjoy. It is fast paced, bloodthirsty, and violent – but contains the usual love interest and fantastic descriptions of Africa (though the latter is less than in most of his books as a lot of the action is at sea). The central characters are Hector Cross and Hazel Bannock – two almost unbelievable and rich people that most of us can only dream about.

There are plenty of twists and turns – Smith certainly knows how to keep the action going, and his usual graphic descriptions of death may make you squirm. Unlike other novels – there are no descriptions of rich heavily armed hunters killing helpless animals. So un-PC nowadays.

The first 200 pages are high octane – if made into a film it would cost a fortune! But extraordinarily, the book falls completely flat for 40 pages (pages 222-262 to be precise). What a bore this section is, until we get back into the action. You can skip these pages and not miss anything. The end, and climax, is nail-biting – I was expecting it to be predictable, but I was wrong.

A final criticism of an otherwise good read is the thinly veiled racism towards Somalis. It’s clear that Smith has little time for them – expressed by his central character who kill them by the dozen. This is a “good guys” versus the “bads guys” where the good guys are good at everything, and the bad guys get almost everything wrong. There is also a completely useless map inside the cover – none of the place-names (other than the Puntland region) used in the book are shown on the map.

Recommended for Wilbur Smith fans – an ordinary read for those new to Smith.

This book is available at Liberty Books