Author: Manzu Islam,
Publ: Peepal Tree Press, 2010. 340 pp
ISBN 13: 9781845231705, £12.99
Reviewer: Karim Murji

Manzu Islam's powerful third novel is a tale about escaping the war and the inescapability of war. More than that, it is about the ties that bind people to the idea of a nation and to one another, and of what makes the basis for community and solidarity.

Set in the Bangladesh war of independence, the novel is divided into three sections, ‘Homestead’, ‘Journey’ and ‘Island’.  The tale is narrated by Kamal, a young man with a hole for a mouth.  Kamal has been ‘adopted’ by a teacher who treats with him kindness and respect but not quite like a son. He grows up with the teacher’s daughter, Moni Banu and a close bond is forged between them. Kamal longs to be accepted as part of the teacher’s family; he longs too for Moni Banu in both familial and other ways. His identification with and wish to belong to the family seems to be more significant than any sense of patriotism in Kamal’s support for the new nation. Despite his condition and his uncertain status within the household, he regards himself as a lucky man. In part that is because he has been taught to read and write by the teacher, which is the basis for the significant gap between his outward appearance and his inner world. Disfigured and unable to speak, Kamal is unable to take part in the war directly and treated as an imbecile by most people. While he cannot talk, his intelligence and a secret education by the teacher makes him an acute observer of people; when not communicating by gesture he uses a slate to write, a neat reversal of the blank slate he is treated as by people who cast their own fears onto him.

As the war approaches and closes in, the idealistic teacher builds a boat to escape or shelter from the war, at the conclusion of which he hopes there will be a new country built on justice and tolerance. The initial dilemma about who will make it onto this seeming ‘Noah’s ark’ is resolved by events that leave him with a motley crew, almost like a ship of fools. They prove largely unable to form a community even in their common constrained circumstances. But there are signs that mutuality and solidarity can prosper in several small ways, and a few big ones as Islam skilfully negotiates the shifting loyalties and ties between men and women of different faiths and outlooks. The rescue of a silent young woman Kulsum dramatically alters Kamal's life. As the reasons for her silence become apparent, the ties that develop between them are largely due to circumstance though it would give too much away to say more than that this relationship provides the catalyst for the last third of the novel during which it is hard to put down. Kamal’s education, his disfigurement and his uncertain status - was he born a Hindu or a Muslim? - are all sources of danger to his survival as the war closes in. Both what he knows and his loyalties are matters of suspicion that could mean the end of his life.

In the third section, Kamal is washed up on an island with a single companion. Comparison with Robinson Crusoe is inevitable and intended, as is clear from an earlier mention of the Hayy ibn Yaqzan (a 12th Century predecessor of Defoe’s famous novel). Islam both probes and subverts the master/slave relationship that emerges between Kamal and the sole other inhabitant of the island. This association, alongside the one between Kamal and Kulsum provide the foundation for Islam’s ideas about the ethics of responsibility and care between people who might regard each other as strangers. Community is founded upon taking responsibility for the recognition of ‘others’, the novel suggests. The other key and linked theme in the book is the way that characters are changed by the war in sometimes brutal and shocking ways, though more subtly Islam makes the reader aware that changes are also brought about by journeying as well as by contact, but not in any simplistic way. These two themes point to the way in which personal feelings and connections are not separate from the abstract ‘imagined community’ of the nation. Rather the personal and abstract are bound up together, and through this tale, he probes the complicated mixture of feelings that shape personal and more abstract emotions and associations, acknowledging that they may not be reconcilable nor can be made into a coherent whole. The different views of Kamal and Kulusm on the new nation of Bangladesh are finely realised.

This deeply humane novel explores the complex nature of the ties that bind people. Song of our swamplands has received far less coverage than Tahmima Anam’s novels covering the same period; it deserves to be equally widely read. Highly engaging and affecting, this is a must read novel.