THE GOOD MUSLIM by Tahmima Anam (HarperCollins), 293 pages, $19.99 paper. Rating: NNNN
Author Tahmima Anam lives in London, but her award-winning first novel, A Golden Age, and its follow-up, The Good Muslim, are set in her native Dhaka, Bangladesh. Rehana Haque and her children Sohail and Maya have survived the 1971 war of independence and are attempting to carry on with their lives.
The Good Muslim is a study in estrangement arising from different ideological reactions to the war: Maya becomes a liberal doctor and writer, while Sohail withdraws into his Islamic faith, moving to the family’s roof and building a devout community of followers.
The plot jumps back and forth between 1971-2 (immediately after the war) and 1984-5, when Maya returns to Dhaka after years of working as a country doctor to find her brother drastically changed and her mother fighting cancer. This structure lets Anam uncover the seeds of the siblings’ rift, and also provides a fragile bridge between their experiences, opening the possibility of reconciliation, or at least understanding.
Anam weaves in stories of women’s abuse during and after the war, including those of Piya, whom Sohail rescues after she’s been captured and raped by Pakistani forces, and Nazia, who endures whipping at the hands of her husband after being accused of having an affair.
Though steeped in history (Anam researched the liberation war for her PhD at Harvard), The Good Muslim is a moving, elegantly written family story of hope and survival in the face of a series of tragic events. Maya’s relationship with her mother is tender and often humorous, and her attachment to her neglected nephew Zaid is an important if heartbreaking thread in the book. There’s also a love story subplot involving an old friend named Joy who helps Maya connect with her past and move forward.
A good read that lets you come to your own conclusions about faith.
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