The book that i am reading now is called 'A Golden Age'; a very aptly named novel that deals withthe 1971 war of independence of Bangladesh. I bought this book about a year back.i had also leafed through it. but as i am reading it closely, i am pretty disappointed. I understand that the war of Bangladesh -- a struggle of epic grandeur-- has somehow been blurred, exoticised and/or sometimes melodramatized in this book. I won't even talk about the culture specific errors.i have so far figured out 33 of them... and i have about hundred more pages to go to finish it.who knows i might just score half a century! I will jot everything down for an academic article that i am planning to write soon.
I was talking to an American professor some weeks back and he told me how his students found this book overwhelming. i said that the book wanted to cater to your taste, so i am not surprised. He didn't understand why i was being so hard on that poor book, especially after it had won this country a reasonable share of international recognition. "You are really being emotional", Said T.S, "after all it is a novel and you cannot deny the creative liberty that the author might take."
Well, Mr. T.S. .. i understand that you and others alike in the US are great advocates of creative freedom even though the artists there still feel huge pressure from the state authorities, censor boards and so on. Don't get me wrong here. I am all for the freedom the artist too. But taking liberty does not mean presenting you with something full of historical errors and trying to pass it off as authentic.
It doesnt matter you said.. well.. what if somebody writes that the American civil war was fought between 11 southern states and one Mister chinese-american... or that during the hot summer afternoon of 911, 2001, two planes attacked the empire states building in New York city and it changed the history of the world? Do you think America will accpet it because one Ms. Whatsoever has to exercise her creative freedom?i don't think so. IF you are writing a historical novel, you better get the history straight. Surely, I wouldn't minda new kind of reality had you been using magic-realism to tell the tale. That was not the case here, right?
For the sake of arguing, you could still say that these distorted facts won't matter to you. But If facts about my country is distorted, It will matter to me. 1971 is not merely a year for me- for us- it is golden past, a time etched into our conscience as the symbol of love, protest and passion. It matters to me when the glitzy western publishers go all ooh-aah about a novel that is so poorly wirtten and more importantly one which deals with an event like the 1971 war of independence with such commercialized yet amaturish manner.
You will not understand it... and it doesnt matterto me.
You can go to hell, because you don't matter at all.
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