Ten years have passed since the debut novel by Bangladeshi writer Zia Haider Rahman, In light of what we know (Picador), a doorstop of both sweeping scope and epic ambition, entered the world. If you have even a passing love of fiction, you know that every now and then a novel comes along that blows you away, grabs your attention, and keeps you hooked. Rahman’s novel offers all this and more.
It draws you into its multi-layered world, surprises you with its complexity, delights you with its elegance, overwhelms you with the sheer weight of all that you do not know, and fills you with a poignant awareness of the vastness of different disciplines – besides literature itself – that can be tapped to tell a story: mathematics and Philosophy, for example. For me, it is the best English-language novel from Bangladesh, perhaps surpassed only by Numair Atif Choudhury’s Babu Bangladesh (HarperCollins India), which was published five years later (posthumously) and is one of the most important works of South Asian literature of recent years.
In light of what we know, with its intellectual rigor and thought-provoking exploration of identity, displacement, and global systems of power, it demonstrates the immense potential of the novel as a form. It also pushes the boundaries of fiction to explore life’s most complex questions and draw connections between disparate ideas and experiences. It is a novel as concerned with the personal as it is the political. A novel to be read not with the casual detachment of an observer, but with the deep devotion of one willing to be transformed by the act of reading. For within its pages lies a world so vividly portrayed, so profoundly moved, that immersing oneself in it is like a journey from which one emerges on the other side changed, enriched, amazed, and in awe of its architecture, its craft, and its world-making.
The broader context of post-9/11 literature
The novel is dense and demanding, at 576 pages and full of epigrams. But it is ultimately so rewarding that you will draw the next person you meet in and tell them to “Read it.” Its thematic focus fits into a broader literary context in which writers from South Asia, particularly Mohsin Hamid, Kamila Shamsie and Nadeem Aslam from Pakistan, are grappling with the aftermath of 9/11 and its ongoing impact on the immigrant experience of Muslims in the West. We all know that after 9/11 there was a shift in world politics that coincided with the rise of Islamophobia, the war on terror and increased scrutiny of Muslims in most Western countries. The positive side of this period, however, was that it provided fertile ground for writers from South Asia and the wider Muslim world, who have returned to it time and again to explore the problems and hardships of living in a world that suddenly views them through the lens of suspicion and fear.
Hamid’s The reluctant fundamentalist (2007) is a dramatic monologue by Changez, a Pakistani man who becomes increasingly alienated from the United States after 9/11. It deftly explores the duality of identity, the seduction of the American dream and the subsequent disillusionment when that dream becomes a nightmare. Another haunting novel on the subject followed a decade later: Exit Westwhich is notable for combining a deeply personal love story with an allegorical treatment of migration. Through his protagonists Nadia and Saeed, Hamid tells a story of love and survival in a nameless city on the brink of war. Significantly, he does not anchor the novel solely in the trauma of terrorism or the East-West dichotomy. Instead, he defies stereotypical images of migrants as victims or threats and humanizes their experiences, undermining the Western media’s dehumanizing narratives about them.
At least two of Shamsie’s imaginative novels – Burnt Shadows (2009) and Homefire (2017) – deal with these themes. While the former spans several generations and continents and examines how the echoes of historical traumas – from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki to the partition of India to the post-9/11 war on terror – shape identities and destinies, the latter is a modern retelling of Sophocles’ Antigonedelves into the lives of British Muslims struggling with loyalty, love and the irresistible pull of radicalisation.
Aslam’s exquisitely written, lyrical and poignant novel, The wasted vigilSet in Afghanistan – a country caught in the crossfire of history – Aslam tells the story of Marcus, an Englishman who has lived in Afghanistan for many years, and the people who cross his path: Lara, a Russian woman searching for her brother; Casa, a young Taliban recruit; and David, an American haunted by his past. Each of these characters is driven by an acute sense of loss – be it the loss of a loved one, a home, or a way of life. Yet amidst this overwhelming grief, Aslam also weaves in moments of love and hope, suggesting that even in the darkest of times, there is the possibility of redemption and renewal.
A novel of great ideas
Back to In light of what we knowThere are few novels that so effortlessly describe the dissonance between what we think we know and the truth that continues to elude us, challenging our perception and forcing us to confront the limits of our own understanding. His motto, a line from WG Sebald’s Austerlitzis: “Our engagement with history, Hilary argues, is an engagement with ready-made images already imprinted on our brains, images that we keep staring at while the truth lies somewhere else entirely, far away from all this, in some place yet undiscovered.” With allusions to a constellation of works at the beginning of each chapter, Rahman lays out a terrain of ideas that resonate with the story he is telling, the story of postcolonial identity, the confusion of the immigrant experience, and the moral ambiguities that arise in the face of global conflict.
Rahman’s background as an international human rights lawyer and academic also influences the depth and breadth of the novel. He works in many details and references to different fields, moving between different places and times in a digressive style. Knowledge – its acquisition, its limits and its consequences – form the philosophical backbone of the novel, giving it a meaning and depth rare in contemporary literature. Rahman questions the reliability of memory, the construction of identity and the epistemological challenges of knowing the world and oneself. He recalls a time when novels were meant to grapple with big ideas, but never loses sight of the larger forces – geopolitics, history, intellectual currents – that shape these individual lives.
The novel revolves around the lives of two friends, both men from South Asia, who meet at Oxford and whose lives diverge greatly in the years that follow. The novel is narrated by one of these men, an unnamed narrator, who comes from a privileged background, while his friend Zafar, a shrewd and unpredictable financial genius in his prime, comes from a much more humble family. Zafar’s journey, both literal and metaphorical, takes him from the streets of Dhaka to the elite circles of London and New York, and finally to the war-torn landscapes of Afghanistan.
The narrator makes it clear at the beginning of the novel that he is merely “reporting” his conversations with Zafar. “I gather and present all the material he made available to me, including numerous voluminous notebooks, and add my own research where necessary. What I am most concerned with is the presentation of the details, or more precisely the details of his story. At the risk of expressing it in such dramatic terms as Zafar would disapprove, it is the story of the disintegration of nations, of war in the 21st century, of marriage into the English nobility, and of the mathematics of love.”
Ultimately, Rahman’s novel is a brave and necessary reminder of what literature can achieve when it dares to think big, reach for the universal, and shine the light on what we know.
