This is a debut novel set against the Bangladesh War of Independence; it’s not a historical novel, but the story is told through the medium of one family and those in their immediate circle. As a mother, she is circumscribed by the 'yawning, cyclic, inexhaustible need' for the son and daughter who were taken from her.

Her second novel, The Good Muslim, was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and was also longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize. What sense did it make,' its people wonder in this novel, 'to have a country in two halves, poised on either side of India like a pair of horns? That worked fine for me, although other readers in our group were frustrated by the withholding of information. The Bangladesh War of Independence, or simply the Liberation War in Bangladesh, was a revolution and armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in East Pakistan and the 1971 Bangladesh genocide.During this operation, about a million East Pakistanis fled to neighbouring India and anything between 30,000 and 3,000,000 East Pakistanis were massacred.

Mujib was prevented from taking office by President General Yahya Khan, of West Pakistan, who along with many of his fellow Punjabis and Pathans held the Bengalis in low regard. It was the last stop after a tour of India and Kashmir, and we had encountered Kashmiri curfews because Pakistan's General Zia had just been killed that day, and Srinigar was taut with fear. As the civil war develops, a war which will eventually see the birth of Bangladesh, Rehana struggles to keep her children safe and finds herself facing a heartbreaking dilemma.

Food features prominently, which always makes me happy: crispy samosas, dal, biryani cooked all day.

As with other novels I've read where conflict turns a family life upside down, there's an underlying story that would have been worth telling by itself: Rehana's struggle to get her children back from her brother after losing custody, and their life as a single-parent family struggling to come to terms with their feelings about the separation, to say nothing of the adolescent and adult lives and loves of the kids. The book was originally published in the United Kingdom by Canongate Books, [14] and then later published in the United States by HarperCollins. The author Tahmima Anam was born in Bangladesh, but grew up traveling around the world due to the work of her father, Mahfuz Anam, who is the editor of The Daily Star. With the conflict taking its bloody course in the East, Rehana realises she cannot stop them from joining the Bangla effort as freedom fighters. Throughout the novel you will not be able to differentiate the seasons, day or night, morning and noon, afternoon and evening.

Dar Rehana isi revine repede, construieste o casa si din inchirierea ei reuseste sa stranga banii necesari sa ii aduca inapoi langa ea. The territories were situated on either side of India as the book phrases "a pair of horns" on either side of India. Life was good in her bungalow with her card-playing friends, her two neighbors who were more than family to her, and a secret she kept since her children were taken away from her ten years earlier.