Scenes from Early Life

From the Man Booker–short-listed author of The Northern Clemency a family and a nation—Bangladesh—are forged through storytelling conversation jokes feuds blood songs bravery and sacrifice In late 1970 a boy named Saadi is born into a large defiantly Bengali family in eastern Pakistan. Months later the country splits in two in what will become one of the most ferocious twentieth-century civil wars. Saadi tells the story of his childhood and of the ingenious ways his family survived the violence and conflicts: from his aunts stuffing him endlessly with sweets to stop marauding soldiers from hearing him cry to street games based on American television shows; from the basement compartment his grandfather built to hide his treasured books pictures and music until after the war to the daily gossip about each and every one of the relatives servants and neighbors. Scenes from Early Life is a beautifully detailed novel of profound empathy—an attempt to capture the collective memory of a family and a country. At once heartbreaking and surprisingly funny Scenes from Early Life is based on the life of Philip Hensher''s husband and as such it is at once a memoir a novel and a history. As this remarkable writer brings the past to life we come to feel vividly and viscerally that Saadi''s family—and its struggles and triumphs—are our own. Scenes form Early Life is the winner of the 2013 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize for a distinguished work of fiction non-fiction or poetry evoking the spirit of a place.