The Histories, Revised (Penguin Classics)

The startling new novel from the author of King of the Badgers and the Man Booker-shortlisted The Northern Clemency.

Philip Hensher’s husband, Zaved Mahmood, was born in late 1970 in Dacca, then a regional capital of Pakistan. In the months following his birth, the eastern part of the country split from the western side in a war of independence of savage violence. In December 1971, after the deaths of millions of innocent victims in the civil war, a new country was declared: Bangla Desh, the Home of the Bengalis.

Scenes from Early Life is the story of one upper-middle-class Bengali family, told in the form of a memoir, narrated by Zaved It is an autobiography, a novel and, in part, a history of one of the most ferocious of twentieth-century civil wars.