A Golden Age Unabridged Cd: A Novel [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Anam's account of a widow living in East Pakistan in the early 1970s just as the country erupts into war is a moving tale that narrator Madhur Jaffrey manages to connect with on a very personal level. Aside from a brief musical intro that helps to capture central character Rehana Haque's sheer joy upon awakening one sunny morning, the reading is an interpersonal experience. Jaffrey's grainy British accent takes on a hint of the rolling Pakistani dialect, with her pronunciation pitch perfect and realistic. Jaffrey seems legitimately attached to the story, as she captures the melancholy that Haque cannot avoid throughout the story. Her performance enhances characters that are already textured and rich with personality. There is a certain loneliness in Jaffrey's omniscient narrator, a characteristic that allows the listener to paint a clear and vivid portrait of a fantastic journey that is as heartbreaking as it is inspiring.
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“In this striking debut novel . . . Anam deftly weaves the personal and the political, giving the terrors of war spare, powerful treatment while lyrically depicting the way in which the struggle for freedom allows Rehana to discover both her strength and her heart.” (The New Yorker )

“A vibrant first novel…A story that is both intimately close to the family and large enough to encompass a revolution.” (Denver Post )

“Told with great skill and urgency…Spellbinding in its sense of quiet foreboding…Anam has written a story about powerful events. But it is her descriptions of the small, unheralded moments, the ones slipping effortlessly between the interstices of major conflagrations, which truly touch the heart.” (San Francisco Chronicle )

“Readable and well crafted . . . Compelling . . . A generous act of creative empathy . . . Anam does not flinch from complexity and horror of a more intimate nature than the details of atrocities.” (Washington Post Book World )

“A GOLDEN AGE has everything an epic should have...[Anam] is able to convey the larger story of politics and war against a much smaller and more intimate story.” (San Jose Mercury News )

“A glittering debut…Readers of Khaled Hosseini’s brutal but magnificent A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS will find similar pleasures in Anam’s book.” (St. Petersburg Times )

“Written with marvelous control and understatement, this first novel impressed me with its maturity.” (Women's Review of Books )

“eventful, exotic, intelligent, and romantic” (Entertainment Weekly )

“Tahmima Anam’s startlingly accomplished and gripping novel describes not only the tumult of a great historical event…but also the small but heroic struggles of individuals living in the shadow of revolution and war.” (Pankaj Mishra )

“[A] wonderful addition to the growing list of novels that seek, in some way, to help us understand the history and people of South Asia.” (USA Today )

“Compelling…Anam is cracking open secrets, personal and political, to let the healing begin.” (O magazine )

“Moving…Full of beauty…Both a riveting tale and a lament for the atrocities the people suffered during Pakistan’s invasion in 1971 …The novel just keeps getting stronger as it progresses…building to a doozy of an ending.” (Christian Science Monitor )

“An illumination on how far a woman will go to protect her children’s bodies and souls . . . Anam reminds us most forcefully that a mother’s love for her child is the most powerful and frightening weapon there is.” (Minneapolis Star Tribune )

“Anam’s story gains momentum as its characters take shape…Readers will feel the depth of this nation’s crisis through its people, and the conclusion delivers a surprising blow.” (Rocky Mountain News )

“An impressive debut...Rehana’s metamorphosis encapsulates her country’s tragedy and makes for an immersive, wrenching narrative.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) ) --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.