Speaking up for Bangladesh

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Philip Hensher’s new novel is set in Dhaka (then Dacca) in 1971, when East Pakistan fought West Pakistan to become an independent nation, Bangladesh. The narrator, a Bengali boy named Saadi, describes the two countries. “To the left was West Pakistan, where they ruled, and spoke Urdu, and wrote in an alphabet that flowed like water under wind. To the right was East Pakistan, where the Bengalis lived. They spoke Bengali, which chatters like a falling xylophone, and is written in an alphabet that looks like a madman trying to remember a table’s shape.”

Throughout the novel, as in that description, Saadi speaks with warmth, wit and a strikingly confident familiarity. Hensher has tackled South Asian history before in The Mulberry Empire (2002), an epic historical pastiche set in the First Anglo-Afghan War. Scenes from Early Life is a different prospect: grounded in memoir with fictional twists. An author’s note reveals: “The narrator speaks in the voice of Zaved Mahmood, the author’s husband, who was born in late 1970 shortly before the outbreak of the war of independence.”

It is a novelist’s job to imagine him or herself inhabiting other characters. Even so, with that direct claim to speak in his husband’s voice, combined with the fact that he is recounting what are to some extent Mahmood’s real experiences, Hensher makes this feel bold and startling. The novel not only blurs the line between memoir and fiction; it blurs the line between Hensher’s identity and Mahmood’s.

If the name on the cover was Zaved Mahmood instead of Philip Hensher, the novel would be no more or less delightful than it already is. Yet Hensher’s note draws attention to the form, and by doing so invites readers to consider what it means. Is this a show of devotion or dominion? Has Hensher taken possession of another man’s voice, or has the voice taken possession of him? If this is a ventriloquist act, which is Keith Harris and which is Orville the Duck? Furthermore, eyebrows and possibly hackles will be raised in post-colonial literature departments by the fact that Mahmood is of Bangladeshi origin and Hensher British. Is Scenes from Early Life a literary form of colonialism? In the 18th century, the British were content merely to take the Bengalis’ land. Now, we take their voices.

Hensher is far too smart a writer to be unaware of these questions. The novel opens with Saadi’s grandmother sneering at his “very pro-Empire” grandfather: “Even the shit of a dog smells good to you, if it’s English.” But most of the book ignores the British in favour of an intimate portrait of Saadi’s upper-middle class Bengali family. There are tamarind trees and mishti-doi, uncles called Laddu and aunties called Bubbly, elopements, monsoon kisses, tinsel-lined rickshaws and red spatterings of paan-dyed spittle. The war muscles in on this cosy world quite gradually. The occasional appearances of nationalist leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman are fleeting but poignant.

If Scenes from Early Life, like The Mulberry Empire, is pastiche, then it is an accomplished one. It feels sincere. Throughout the political and family drama, Hensher maintains a real affection for his characters. Whether the narrator’s voice is his, Mahmood’s or a synthesis of the two, it is convincing — and amiable. The questions of authorship raised by Scenes from Early Life will provide students of identity politics with essay material for years. Other readers, of course, may be content simply to enjoy it.

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