Winner, Book of the Year and Christina Stead Prize, New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards 1994 Winner, Best First Book, Southeast Asia and South Pacific Region, Commonwealth Writers Prize 1995 Shortlisted, Age Book of the Year Award 1994 Shortlisted, Benella Award for Audio Book of the Year, Braille & Talking Book Library Audio Award, 1996 Moving between Australia and Bangladesh, Seasonal Adjustments introduces a fresh new voice to the Australian literary scene - with a fascinating story to tell. Iqbal Chaudhary is fortyish, but the mid-life crisis he faces is more complex than many. His Australian marriage has collapsed, his past surfaces to bother his conscience and he feels a compulsive need to go back to the country he left immediately after the war with Pakistan, eighteen years earlier. But his reception from family and friends is deeply mixed. Iqbal is forced to confront why he left Bangladesh and how he feels about his family as well as his native country whose poverty, squalor and overcrowding make him react involuntarily with the squeamishness of a Westerner. Going back, he takes with him his young daughte
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Khan's first novel, the 1994 winner of Australia's NSW State Literary Award, is a thoroughly absorbing account of culture, family and faith told by a man who has a tenuous relationship with all three. Khan's narrator, Iqbal Chaudhary, left his native Bangladesh for Australia in the middle of the Pakistani Civil War. The novel begins 18 years later, when Chaudhary returns for the first time to his Muslim homeland. Reunited with his upper-class family, Chaudhary struggles with choices of culture and faith not only for himself but for the young daughter he brought with him. ``There are occasions,'' he says, ``when I regret my exposure to the diversity of cultural radiation which has bleached my individuality. I think I know how a travelling performer might feel in his private moments. Effortlessly I can slip into cultural roles.'' His Australian wife's sudden decision to opt for a trial separation adds to Chaudhary's sense of displacement. Kahn's literary background (he is the author of a book of criticism) serves him well, and he brings his novel to life with a ``multiplicity of meanings'' through particularly adept use of metaphor and symbolism. Kahn's imagery transcends culture, sex and faith, pulling readers into the heart of a character who is an alien in both his native land and his adopted country.
Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Bangladesh through familiar foreign eyes,
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This review is from: Seasonal Adjustments (Paperback)
It's a rare treat to find an English language book that offers Bangladesh cultural insights. In the novel Seasonal Adjustments, Adir Khan introduces us to Iqbal Chaudhary who has been out of the country for 18 years when a personal crises drives him to return to his boyhood home along with his young daughter. This book offers a rewarding story of Mr. Chaudhary's personal growth, and as a side benefit we get to experience Bangladesh culture filtered through the recesses of his memory as well as his new Australian perspective.
It's difficult to leave home, and even harder with the tight bonds of the well-off Chaudhary family. His internal struggles starts there, but add to that the baggage of leaving friends who suffered through the Independence war and its aftermath, and pile on top of that a troubled marriage. He has many things to sort out in his return home. Besides these internal struggles, there are many other difficult things that we experience through his eyes. He is, for example, often torn by his memories of the shaman yet is forced to deal with the same man who his family still relies upon. As he travels through the area, we experience how poverty drives people to do things that shock him and us. Time and again we get to see him contrast his cultural understanding with his new western outlook. For example, he knows the cultural drivers for how women are treated, yet he can contrast it with how this behavior wouldn't be tolerated in Australia. Seasonal Adjustments presents a fulfilling story of personal anguish and growth and complements it with a sharp eye towards Bangladesh vs western culture.
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