Scenes from Early Life
By (Author) Philip Hensher
HarperCollins Publishers
Fourth Estate Ltd
5th February 2013
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
FIC
Winner of Ondaatje Prize 2013
Paperback
320
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 20mm
220g
The startling new novel from the author of King of the Badgers and the Man Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency.
I was a baby during the war. We stayed inside for months. All my aunts took turns in feeding me. I couldn't be heard to cry. You see, there were soldiers in the streets. They would have known what a crying baby meant. So I had to be kept silent. No, not everyone came out of the war alive.
One familys life, and a nation Bangladesh are uniquely created through conversation, sacrifice, songs, bonds, blood, bravery and jokes. Narrated by a young boy born into a savage civil war, Scenes from Early Life is a heartbreaking, funny and gripping novel by one of our finest writers.
An unostentatious tour de force, combining a tender and richly affectionate family memoir with a vividly evoked portrait of town and country life and the story of the birth of a nation. It is full of surprises Margaret Drabble
Beautifully packed with detail does for Bangladesh what Salmon Rushdie did for India with Midnights Children It is a remarkable re-creation of a land that most of us know little about Sunday Times
This is his most purely pleasurable novel to date Daily Mail
Highly impressive for all Hensher's accomplished ventriloquism his ability to inhabit the voice of a Muslim child and a history teacher at the same time his own voice is not lost heart-breaking Guardian
A deeply interesting book The joins are seamless It is inventive, clever and loving; a Booker candidate, I would have thought. Spectator
this delightful book shows for the first time what Hensher has largely concealed in the past: his heart Amanda Craig, Independent on Sunday
Philip Hensher is a columnist for the Independent, arts critic for the Spectator and a Granta Best of Young British novelist. He has written six novels, including The Mulberry Empire and the Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency, and one collection of short stories. He lives in South London.