The Children of This Madness

A Bengali American woman reckons with grief and questions of identity during the 2003 invasion of Iraq in Wahhaj’s didactic debut novel (after the collection Katy Family). Beena Nasir Uddin is preparing to complete her PhD program in Houston when her mother and brother are killed in a bomb blast in her hometown of Dhaka. She’s eager to leave everything and return to Bangladesh, but her father, Nasir, urges her to stay put for her safety. Beena reluctantly agrees, though she’s uneasy about remaining in the U.S. due to her opposition to the war in Iraq, which she holds strongly as a fellow Muslim and because she spent part of her childhood in Mosul. A parallel narrative traces Nasir’s life, offering a panoramic view of his impoverished childhood and his later pursuit of engineering and teaching jobs in Iraq, where he sought a haven for the family during Bangladesh’s fight for liberation from Pakistan. Nasir eventually finds his way back to his homeland in 1982, only to discover that corruption and new bureaucracy have made it impossible for him to thrive in his engineering career. The novel attempts to foreground the resilience of Bangladesh and its people across generations, and there are many passages of dialogue in which the characters condemn U.S. imperialism, but Wahhaj doesn’t manage to weave them into the narrative. As a result, the novel ends up feeling like a geopolitical history lesson. Here’s hoping Wahhaj strikes the right balance next time out. (Dec.)