‘Harvest’ by Manjula Padmanabhan

 → About the author :

Manjula Padmanabhan (born 1953) is a playwright, journalist, comic strip artist, and children's book author responsible for the play Harvest. She has also written such plays as ‘Lights Out!’ (1984),’Hidden Fires’, ‘The Artist's Model’ (1995) and ‘Sextet’ (1996).

Born in Delhi to a diplomat family in 1953, she went to boarding school in her teenage years. After college her determination to make her own way in life led to various kind of works in publishing and media related fields

She has authored a collection of short stories, called ‘Kleptomania’. Her most recent book, published in 2008, is titled "Escape".

Apart from writing newspaper columns she also created comic strips She created Suki, an Indian female comic character, which was serialised as a strip in Sunday Observer. Before 1997 she was better known as cartoonist and had a daily cartoon strip in ‘The Pioneer’ newspaper.

→ ‘Harvest’ :

Harvest is a futuristic dystopian play by Manjula Padmanabhan about organ-selling in India. It was first published in 1997 by Kali for Women.

The play takes place in a future Bombay in 2010. Om Prakash, a jobless Indian, agrees to sell unspecified organs through InterPlanta Services, Inc. to a rich person for a small fortune. InterPlanta and the recipients are obsessed with maintaining Om's health and invasively control the lives of Om, his mother Ma, and his wife Jaya in their one-room apartment. The recipient, Ginni, periodically looks in on them via videophone and treats them condescendingly. Om's diseased brother Jeetu is taken to give organs instead of Om.

Harvest won the 1997 Onassis Prize as the best new international play. The playtext was included in Black and Asian Plays, published by Aurora Metro Books in 2000.

Harvest is a play by Manjula Padmanabhan set in the near future that deals with organ selling in India. Aurora Metro Books published the play in 2003. It’s a critique on the commodification of the body in third-world countries.

Manjula Padmanabhan, a 21st-century woman, being a technocrat herself, uses the techniques and tools of the modern world in her most celebrated play, Harvest (1996). Though Harvest is not, as obvious, the first play Padmanabhan wrote, her fame as a playwright rests on it.

Padmanabhan drew the attention of the world when Harvest won the Onassis cash-rich

award for the theatre at Athens (Greece) out of more than a hundred entries.

The play confronts us with a futuristic Bombay of the year 2010. Om Prakash, a jobless Indian agrees to sell unspecified organs through Inter Planta Services, Inc to a rich person in the first-world for a small fortune. InterPlanta and the recipients are obsessed with maintaining Om’s health and invasively control the lives of Om, his mother Ma, and wife Jaya in their one-room apartment. The recipient, Ginni, periodically looks in on them via a videophone and treats them condescendingly. Om’s diseased brother Jeetu is taken to give organs instead of Om. Harvest won the 1997 Onassis Prize as the best new international Play.

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‘Sultana’s Dream’ by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

 About the author :

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, also known as Begum Rokeya, was a Bengali Muslim feminist writer who wrote essays, novels, and short stories on the state of women's rights in British India and women's liberation. Born in 1880 into an upper-class family, Rokeya's father taught both her and her sister Arabic, Persian, English, and Bengali, although he encouraged the two young women to focus on studying Arabic and Persian. At age eighteen, Rokeya married Khan Bahadur Sakhawat Hossain. Her husband encouraged Rokeya to continue writing and to pursue writing in Bengali as well as English. In 1905, while her husband was away, Rokeya wrote Sultana's Dream, describing it as an exercise to pass the time and explore literary forms other than the essay. When her husband returned and read the story, he encouraged Rokeya to publish it, and in the same year the story appeared in The Indian Ladies' Magazine. In 1908, the story was republished as a book.

Rokeya passed away in 1932 as a result of heart problems. Her invaluable contribution to the women's rights movement in Bangladesh, as well as her prolific writing career, have made her a central part of Muslim women's history and literature.

‘Sultana’s Dream’ :

‘Sultana’s Dream’ is a short science fiction story by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, also known as Rokeya Begum, written in 1905. First published in Indian Ladies’ Magazine and later republished in book format in 1908, the story began as an exercise for Rokeya to show her husband her mastery of English. It details an unnamed narrator’s dream of an Indian feminist utopia. The story is the first known work of Indian science fiction. Hossain was an early feminist and the founder of Calcutta’s first Islamic school for girls, as well as the Muslim Women’s Organization.

The story begins with the narrator “thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood.” The narrator is unnamed; “sultana” is a title, the female equivalent of “sultan,” and not a first name. She says she is not sure whether she fell asleep or not, but knows that she felt as if she were awake.

A friend, Sister Sara, enters the room and wishes her good morning, although it is nighttime. Sara asks her to come outside and walk in the garden, and the narrator discovers that it is indeed light outside, and the streets are filled with people. The narrator is ready to be embarrassed, afraid she will encounter a man while she is walking in the street in broad daylight, an action that was taboo for women at the time. But strangely, there are no men out.

Passersby laugh at her in a language she cannot quite understand. Sister Sara says they are saying she looks “mannish,” that she is acting timid like men do. The narrator does not understand her, and suddenly realizes she is not walking with her friend at all—this woman is a stranger.

She tells the woman, still referred to as “Sister Sara,” that she is uncomfortable walking around without a veil on. Sister Sara tells her she need not worry about her veil: she is in Ladyland, and does not need to worry about encountering a man while unveiled.

The narrator looks around and sees that Ladyland is like a garden. The streets are filled with flowers. Sister Sara says that Calcutta could look like this too, if the men of that city wanted it to. The narrator asks where all the men are, and Sister Sara explains that in Ladyland, men are kept indoors, just as women are kept indoors in India. The narrator says it is not safe for women to come out of the zenanas, women’s quarters, because they are naturally weak, and Sister Sara replies that this is only true when men or wild animals are out in the streets. She compares the idea of keeping women indoors while men roam free to locking up the sane and letting the insane loose, because men are more capable of harm.

The narrator explains she has no choice in keeping to the zenanas; women have no voice in their own affairs in India. Everything is decided by men, whose strength makes them lord and master. Sister Sara argues that lions are stronger than men, but that does not mean lions rule the world. She says women in India have lost their rights by ignoring their best interests.

The narrator and Sister Sara sit together. Sister Sara begins to embroider, explaining that although this is all women have to do in the zenana, women in Ladyland still do this work, rather than giving it to men, who do not have the patience to thread a needle. She explains that she is able to do both the domestic work of women and the office work of men because women are more efficient. Men, on the other hand, can stretch two hours of work into seven, smoking and talking rather than getting down to business.

Sister Sara also tells the narrator that in Ladyland there are no epidemics, or even mosquito bites. It is rare for anyone there to die young. She shows the narrator their solar technologies as well: they use solar energy to cook their food. She says these new technologies were developed some years ago, after their country’s queen mandated that all women be educated, and barred them from marrying until they were at least 21. Women’s universities invented ways to draw water from the sky and energy from the sun.

While women were inventing new technologies, the men of the country were focused on military strength, and laughed at the women’s inventions. The women sought revenge, though the “Lady Principals” of the two women’s universities advised them not to respond by words but by action.

The opportunity came when refugees from another country sought political asylum in theirs. In response, the neighbouring country’s king declared war. All the men of Ladyland went to fight the enemy, but were defeated. One of the Lady Principals came up with a plan to defeat the enemy, but said all the remaining men must be confined to the zenanas. The next day, the Lady Principal and her students marched to the battlefield and directed all the sun’s rays towards the advancing army. Scorched, the enemy retreated.

Since then, says Sister Sara, no one has dared try to invade Ladyland, and women have ruled while men remain in the zenanas. The Queen sent a letter out explaining that the men would be called out again if their services were required. So far, it has been ten years and they have not been needed. Sister Sara explains that the system is called mardana; marda is the Urdu word for “man.” Ever since the mardana system, there has been no crime and no need for the criminal justice system.

Sister Sara continues to explain how the women of Ladyland save labor: fields are tilled by machine. There are no railroads or paved streets, so there are no railroad or street accidents, either. A sprinkler system keeps everyone cool in summer, while stored solar energy keeps them warm in winter. Their religion is based on “Love and Truth.” No one is punished with death; any offenders are simply banished, though they are forgiven if they repent.

The narrator asks if she can meet the Queen, and Sister Sara obligingly assembles a hydrogen-powered air-car that takes them to her. The Queen greets them both and tells the narrator about their trade: Ladyland trades only with the women of other countries, not men. They prefer to seek knowledge, rather than wealth, and try to enjoy what nature provides them.

The narrator tours Ladyland, but wakes up to discover she is back in her chair in India. Ladyland was all a dream.

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‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ by Jean Rhys

 About the author :

Jean Rhys was born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams on 24 August 1890 on the Caribbean island of Dominica to a Welsh father and a Creole mother of Scottish descent. At the age of sixteen, in 1907, Rhys was sent to England, where she attended school and attempted to start a career as an actress. During her time in Britain, she was often mocked for her foreign accent and struggled to fit in at school and in her career. Rhys later worked as a chorus girl. In 1910, she began a tumultuous affair with wealthy stockbroker Lancelot Grey Hugh Smith, which, when ended, left Rhys heartbroken. In her despair, Rhys took her hand at writing, keeping diaries and notebooks recording her emotional state during this time: this greatly informed her later writing.

In 1919, she moved around Europe after meeting and marrying Frenchman Jean Lenglet, the first of her three husbands. By 1923, Lenglet was arrested for illegal activities leaving Rhys to seek refuge in Paris.

During her time in Paris, Rhys came under the patronage of English writer Ford Madox Ford who published some of her short stories in the magazine The Transatlantic Review. She received much support from Ford, with whom she later began an affair.

By the end of her extensive literary career, Rhys had published five novels and seven short story collections. In 1960, she retreated from public life, living in rural England until her death on 14 May 1979.

‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ :

‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ (1966), Jean Rhys’s best-known novel, contemplates the life of Bertha Mason Rochester, a minor character in Charlotte Brontë’s novel ‘Jane Eyre’ (1847). Rhys made a career out of writing novels and short stories that contemplated the lives of unconventional women. She wrote and published most of her fiction in the 1930s, then went out of print for several decades. The rise of feminist and postcolonial literary studies brought a renewed interest in Rhys’s work, and ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ has become a widely studied work of fiction.

‘Wide Sargasso Sea’ is divided into three parts. Part One takes place in Jamaica during the 1830s shortly after Great Britain passed the Emancipation Act and ended slavery in its West Indian colonies. Antoinette Cosway, the protagonist, narrates this section and chronicles her early life on her family’s Coulibri Estate. Following the new law, the Cosways have freed their slaves, but the estate has fallen into disarray.

 

Antoinette and her mother Annette live there with their servants, including Antoinette’s nurse, Christophine. Like Antoinette, Christophine is originally from Martinique. She was Mr. Cosway’s wedding present to his young wife.

Annette remarries an Englishman who has recently arrived in Jamaica to profit from the white Creole landholders’ dire economic straits. His name is Mason, and he has a son named Richard. Under Mason’s direction, Coulibri Estate thrives again and some of the formerly enslaved people who worked there even return. Others, however, resent the presence of the white family. One night, a mob gathers and burns the house down, first attacking the room in which Antoinette’s disabled brother Pierre sleeps. The mob forces the family to flee in the middle of the night.

Pierre dies from injuries sustained in the fire. The tragedy triggers a breakdown within Annette, and she is committed to a sanitarium in the country. Mason uses his wife’s hospitalisation as an excuse to stay away from Jamaica. Antoinette stays for a short while with her Aunt Cora until she sends Antoinette to live and study at a convent. She remains there until she marries her husband whom she meets through her stepbrother.

In Part Two, Antoinette and her new husband honeymoon at a house in Dominica where she and Aunt Cora used to spend their summers. Antoinette’s husband initially dislikes the Caribbean landscape but warms to it after getting to know some of the locals. One of them, Daniel, writes a letter to Antoinette’s husband, warning him about the dark secrets in Antoinette’s family. Antoinette’s husband visits Daniel at his home on the island where Daniel continues to discourage him from loving Antoinette.

Daniel’s words turn Antoinette’s husband, who has never truly loved his wife, against her. He accuses her of having been dishonest about her origins, while also acknowledging that he, too, has not been forthcoming. One night, with Antoinette in the next room, he has a brief affair with their servant, Amélie. Antoinette becomes increasingly unstable and attacks her husband with a broken rum bottle. He bans Christophine from the house in Dominica, accusing her of exacerbating Antoinette’s instability. Christophine leaves, claiming that she has given Antoinette something to help her sleep. Antoinette will remain in this state of repose, Christophine says, until her husband demonstrates proper love for her. If he doesn’t, Antoinette will descend into madness like her mother.

Antoinette’s husband ignores Christophine’s advice. He plans to leave Dominica and return to Jamaica with his wife. While departing, he tells her that he despises her as much as she does him and that he will express his hatred as perpetual coldness.

In Part Three, Antoinette is locked away in an attic room of her husband’s estate and is cared for by a woman named Grace Poole. She dreams of escaping her quarters and walking through the corridors of the strange house. In one dream, she sets fire to the house with a lit candle. One day, after Grace falls asleep, Antoinette seizes the woman’s keys and sets out down the corridor with her candle resolved about what she must do. 

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‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy

 About the author : 

Arundhati Roy (born November 24, 1961) is an Indian novelist, author of The God of Small Things, for which she won the Booker Prize. She was born in Shillong, Meghalaya to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu father. She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala. She left Kerala for Delhi at age 16, and embarked on a bohemian lifestyle, staying in a small hut with a tin roof and making a living selling empty beer bottles. She then proceeded to study architecture at the Delhi School of Architecture.

She began writing The God of Small Things in 1992 and finished it in 1996. She received half-a-million pounds in advances, and rights to the book were sold in 21 countries. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam.

Roy is also a well known peace activist. One of her first essays was in response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan. The essay, titled The End of Imagination, is a critique against the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection "The Cost of Living," in which she also begins her crusade against India's massive hydroelectric dam project. Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May, 2004, for her work in social campaigns and advocacy of non-violence.

‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy :

‘The God of Small Things’, the debut novel of Indian architect Suzanna Arundhati Roy, was published in 1997. A family tragedy centered on the emotional and psychological evolution of fraternal twins Rahel and Estha Ipe, the novel, set in Ayemenem, a remote coastal town in the state of Kerala in southwestern India, shuttles between events in 1969—when the twins, age seven, are involved in the accidental drowning of their British cousin—and more than 25 years later, when the twins reunite as emotionally damaged adults. The novel uses an intricate architecture of flashbacks, memories, poetic dream sequences, interior monologues, and flashforwards to capture the tensions and sorrows of multiple generations of this middle-class Indian family caught up within the social pressures of a modern caste system. The novel became an international best seller and received the prestigious Man Booker Prize. The study guide uses the 2017 Random House paperback edition.

Let us have the God of small things summary in a brief but in a proper way. God of small things summary is having its Plot from Kerala and covering the time period from 1969 to 1993. This novel is Arundhati Roy’s first and only fiction novel. Its set up is in Ayemenem, a district in Kerala, India. The story starts from 1969 when fraternal twins Rahel and Estha were 7 years old, and then ends in 1993 when they reunite at age 31.

The story begins with their family background and telling how Pappachi, their grandfather lost his chance to become a famous entomologist. Throughout his life, Pappachi takes it out on Mammachi, their grandmother by beating regularly. These pairs are having kids a daughter, Ammu, and a son Chacko. Chacko does his study in England and there he marries an English woman named Margaret. Chacko has a daughter Sophie. But, soon their marriage falls apart, and Margaret marries with another man Joe. After divorce Chacko returns home in India.

On the other hand, Ammu wishes to have an adventurous life and therefore she goes live with a relative away from Ayemenem. There Ammo meets a man named Baba and marries him. They have twins, boy Esthappen, and girl, Rahel. Baba is abusive and incompetent and hence he lost his job. To get his job back he allows his boss to have sex with Ammo. But Ammo refuses and returns to her home with the kids.

Chacko invites his ex-wife and daughter Sophie to visit his place Ayemenem after the death of a man to whom she was in love. Therefore Chacko and members of his family go to the airport to pick them up. But on the way, they are stopped by a communist rally. Rahel sees Velutha waving a red flag, who is a dear friend. Velutha is untouchable maintenance worker, working in their family’s pickle factory.

After the rally, they go to the theater to see their favorite film. After receiving Margaret and Sophie, Rahel feels jealous due to the attention given to Sophie. Rahel meets Velutha to talk about it, telling him that she saw him at the march. Bur, she will not tell it to anyone. Ammu becomes jealous, after seeing her daughter and Velutha talking together.

Meanwhile, Estha tells his sister for a leave plan. They find a boat to fix up and get ready.

During this, it is discovered that Ammu and Velutha are having an affair. But it is forbidden due to Velutha’s low class. So, the family locks Ammu in her room. Assuming this as the perfect time to escape, kids with Sophie leave the home with the boat. On the way, a log collides with the boat and Sophie drowns and dies. Rahel and Estha anyhow manage their life and go to a large place “History House.” For hiding themselves.

The family takes the dead body of Sophie as a sign to keep Velutha away from Ammu and so they blame everything on him. They tell the police that Velutha has raped Ammu and kidnaped the kids. Due to the torture of police Velutha dies.

Now, Estha moves to live with his father, Baba and Rahel stay with Mammachi and Ammu run off to live on her own. After many years Rahel reunites with her mother who is suffering from a lung disease that eventually kills her. After finishing her studies, Rahel moves to America. There she marries a white man that she doesn’t really love.

At the age of 31, Rahel hears about returning of her brother, Estha, to Ayemenem, and so she heads back to meet with him. There she discovers that her brother had become a mute due to her Baba. But, Rahel is determined to bring her brother back to her, and so she spends a lot of time with him and reminiscing together. This leads to them having sex, and for the first time, they are with someone they love. Rahel and Estha, the fraternal twins, are representing the major theme of the novel including forbidden love, discrimination, and familial and social tensions in such a large family with a lot to lose.

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'The Treatment of Bibi Haldar' by Jhumpa Lahiri

 

About the author :

Jhumpa Lahiri was born 1967 in London, England, and raised in Rhode Island. She is a graduate of Barnard College, where she received a B.A. in English literature, and of Boston University, where she received an M.A. in English, M.A. in Creative Writing and M.A. in Comparative Studies in Literature and the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She has taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.

Her debut collection, ‘Interpreter of Maladies’, won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. It was translated into twenty-nine languages and became a bestseller both in the United States and abroad. In addition to the Pulitzer, it received the Hemingway Award, the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award, and a nomination for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Lahiri was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002.

‘The Namesake’, published in September 2003, is Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel. Her second collection, ‘Unaccustomed Earth’ was published in 2008 and became an immediate New York Times bestseller.

'The Treatment of Bibi Haldar' :

Bibi Haldar, an Indian woman who is 29 years old, has suffered for the greater part of her life from a mysterious, epilepsy-like ailment that no doctor or priest has been able to alleviate or cure. She is given petty employment by her cousin Haldar, who runs a cosmetics shop. In return for her services, she receives food, provisions, a sleeping space, and fabric for clothing.

Finally, according to the diagnosis of some palmists, it is decided that Bibi Haldar needs a man. This diagnosis unleashes a slew of energetic cosmetic and sartorial preparations on Bibi's part: "To get her to quiet down, Haldar placed a one-line advertisement in the town newspaper." The ad, however, produces no results.

That November, Haldar's wife was pregnant. She delivers a baby girl the following June. The Haldars carefully insulate their child from any contact with Bibi, who they are convinced has been possessed by the devil. When the Haldar baby falls ill with a fever, Haldar's wife denounces Bibi as a witch who has infected the baby.

Then a curious turn of events occurs. The neighbours, upset at the Haldars' treatment of Bibi, drive the family out of business. They donate objects for Bibi's welfare. After some months, during which Bibi remains isolated, the neighbours discover that she is four months pregnant. She delivers a son. The father is never identified. As for Bibi, she is now considered cured.

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'Green Parrots in a Cage' by Gopi Gauba

 ∆ About the Author :

Gopi Gauba was a journalist and short story writer. The partition of India in 1947 and its traumatic impact on people who were forced to migrate, forms the background of her story 'Green Parrots in a cage'. The story has won a BBC prize.

∆ 'Green Parrots in a Cage' :

There was a tall, middle-aged man with burning black eyes standing at the gate of the narrator. The man was to sell his two parrots in a cage. The writer’s three years old son was highly fascinated by the very little parrots that were jumping and perching on a bar inside the cage. The man badly required money for ticket to go home and he requested the narrator to buy the birds and give him some money. The narrator found him to be a dweller of Kutch, not far from Hyderabad Sind. The son of the narrator took the cage and his heart was dancing with joy. He was feeding the parrots with a green chili and ripe guava. While feeding, the narrator’s hand was nipped by the birds. She was angry and expressed her anger for the imprisoned birds.

Her son could understand her words and he was pleading with his little gestures. The narrator would have opened the door of the cage unless she was not forbidden by her mother. There were cats in her room. She could find only a few trees in the Mosque. So she did not think to lose the birds there. There were a hundred pigeons and some peacocks living in those trees in the courtyard of the Mosque.

Then she thought of the orchard on the outskirts of the town with its many fruit trees and the whole orchard was being looked after by the gardener Ramai. He used to frighten away the marauding crows and kites. It took them a month to go to that orchard. By that time, she was pregnant and could not drive the carriage to the orchard. Din Mohammed who had been with the writer did not agree to take the risk. He on the other hand, requested the writer to release the birds there, but she did not agree.

Then, the writer went to the Mosque to meet the old man Maulana, who was seen grief-stricken and old-grey rimmed eyes expressed the tragedy of the cruel partition. Meanwhile the writer became thoughtful and looking out up to the lane where she found countless pigeons were pecking, swinging and strutting.

The writer expressed her thought to let the parrots loose at the orchard, where they would get lot of fruits. Because they were wild birds and would fly away from the bondage. At afternoon the writer reached at the orchard taking the second coachman, Khansahib a young Pathan.

Reaching at the orchard, she called out the name of Ramai who, by the time, had died. She could guess what to do. Her sound struck her ears and sheer the silence proved everything. The beauty of the place satisfied her heart. Meanwhile she opened the door of the cage and waited until their coming out. But surprisingly, the birds could not come out. They were not ready and willing to leave their place where they had been for some months.

Now, the writer invented some idea, the relation between the dweller and the native place. At one time she saw the birds were trying to break the bars of the cage and at other time, they were no more there. She started laughing, because she could not find where they mingled among the thick leaves of the trees. The writer returned home but gladly. Likewise, people of Kutch, Sind and Hyderabad went away leaving their native place after the partition.

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‘A Golden Age’ by Tahmima Anam

Hello everyone, I am writing this blog on one of the most famous novels, 'A Golden Age' by Tahmima Anam. So, in this blog I am trying to give my views on this novel.

 About the author :

Tahmima Anam’s first novel, ‘A Golden Age’, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and went on to be translated into 27 languages. It was followed by The Good Muslim and The Bones of Grace. She is the recipient of an O. Henry Award and has been named one of Granta’s best young British novelists. She was a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and was recently elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she attended Mount Holyoke College and Harvard University and now lives in London, where she is on the board of ROLI, a music tech company founded by her husband.

‘A Golden Age’ :

Tahmina Anam, the author of this first novel, begins powerfully: “Dear Husband, I lost our children today.” The voice is that of Rehanna, a young widow who has been forced to hand her children to her brother-in-law because she has no money. Fast-forward to years later, to 1971, when Rehanna’s children, Sohail and Maya, are young adults. Rehanna still celebrates the anniversary of their return, keeping secret how she managed to bring it about. Her problem is basically the same: how she can hang on to them. Now, however, the world around them is crumbling. Bangladesh is separating from Pakistan, and her children are involved in the separatist struggle. It is a foregone conclusion when they ask their mother to hide a wounded rebel. Their mother can’t say no. More interestingly, Rehanna falls in love with him.

Still, through war, massacres and refugee camps, Rehanna is more a witness than an active participant. Her world continues to be circumscribed entirely to that of her children. The setting is intriguing and the landscape, at times, vivid. Unfortunately, Rehanna’s oppressive relationship with her children overwhelms everything else. “It’s not your fault. Whatever it was, it can’t have been your fault,” Rehanna tells her son at one point. Her tiresome devotion all but drowns 'A Golden Age'. When the climax comes, and she must make a choice, it is predictable.

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