Overview

A 2026 BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN THE OBSERVER, FINANCIAL TIMES AND NEW STATESMAN 'Captivating, gripped me from the first page' ELIF SHAFAK 'An unflinching, violent storm of a novel' TASH AW 'Extraordinary' SALMAN RUSHDIE 'A dark, brazen fairytale' LEILA ABOULELA 'Part holy legend, part undeniable, illuminating prophecy of how we will overcome' V.V. GANESHANANTHAN Any moment now, we would grow up, and we would become them, waking late and hungry and with a job that had no name On a desolate, sinking island, a group of children witness their mothers living lives of cruelty and servitude. Bought and sold by Amma, the sadistic madam who was once herself sold into slavery, the women have learned to accept their fate. Yet their children weave fantastic tales of escape, imagining that someday they will leave the island and enjoy a life of freedom. When Kusum Khan, a young, educated woman from the city, is forcibly brought to the island, she too is subjected to Amma's violent induction. Yet Kusum refuses to yield, and soon the collective complacency of her fellow prisoners turns into a ferocity and defiance. Together, they begin a rebellion that will upend their island, their world and the very order of things.

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9781837265817

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Reviews

An unflinching, violent storm of a novel, yet also full of humanity. It broadens our understanding of how literature can capture life in all its ugliness and glory - a magnificent achievement -- TASH AW A dark, brazen fairytale with seething forests, a wicked matriarch and monsters who devour the flesh of innocent maidens. With gusto, Anam casts a spell that ignites and lights up the circuits and dynamics of exploitation, and offers a way out -- LEILA ABOULELA Through the lives of a handful of women trapped in a brothel, Tahmima Anam paints a kaleidoscopic picture of a part of Bengal Delta that is in the throes of cataclysmic change - economic, technological and environmental. Both devastating and inspirational, Uprising is not to be missed -- AMITAV GHOSH Powerful and uncompromising, Uprising looks into one of the darkest corners of the world and finds bright fire -- KAMILA SHAMSIE A fierce, bold novel that is tender towards its subjects and unsparing in its challenge to us as readers: to see the dispossessed of the world as Anam does, as fully, beautifully, heartbreakingly human -- MONICA ALI At once ferocious and beautiful, told in incantatory prose, this is a vital, unflinching and unforgettable novel. That it's about an ongoing and age-old horror makes it all the more extraordinary -- MIRZA WAHEED A collective voice, a poem and a call-to-arms. Shocking, sweet and surprising. It's an uprising. It's wonderful -- ALEXANDRA PRINGLE Praise for Tahmima Anam: Impossibly timely and bewilderingly smart -- ELIF SHAFAK One of the most impressive novelists of her generation * * The Times * * Anam's prose is glowing and graceful * * Guardian * *

Tahmima Anam has written a kind of miracle. She has taken lives of awful hardship and woven from them a fable of terrible beauty. Uprising is extraordinary -- SALMAN RUSHDIE An unflinching, violent storm of a novel, yet also full of humanity. It broadens our understanding of how literature can capture life in all its ugliness and glory - a magnificent achievement -- TASH AW An urgent, collective-voice novel . . . I loved it -- ALEX PRESTON * * Observer * * A dark, brazen fairytale with seething forests, a wicked matriarch and monsters who devour the flesh of innocent maidens. With gusto, Anam casts a spell that ignites and lights up the circuits and dynamics of exploitation, and offers a way out -- LEILA ABOULELA The politics of rich and poor across the countries of the Global South play out to powerful effect . . . Tahmima Anam's Uprising, about enslaved sex workers in climate-threatened Bangladesh * * New Statesman * * Through the lives of a handful of women trapped in a brothel, Tahmima Anam paints a kaleidoscopic picture of a part of Bengal Delta that is in the throes of cataclysmic change - economic, technological and environmental. Both devastating and inspirational, Uprising is not to be missed -- AMITAV GHOSH Powerful and uncompromising, Uprising looks into one of the darkest corners of the world and finds bright fire -- KAMILA SHAMSIE A devastatingly potent novel. Anam goes to the darkest reaches of the psyche and forges, of what she finds there, an astonishing hope - for her characters, for us all. The novel's choral narration sets a brightness against despair - the innocence of its young girls, their indomitability, and the painfully-willed sisterhood of its women, is heartbreaking, life-affirming, beautiful -- LUCY CALDWELL A fierce, bold novel that is tender towards its subjects and unsparing in its challenge to us as readers: to see the dispossessed of the world as Anam does, as fully, beautifully, heartbreakingly human -- MONICA ALI At once ferocious and beautiful, told in incantatory prose, this is a vital, unflinching and unforgettable novel. That it's about an ongoing and age-old horror makes it all the more extraordinary -- MIRZA WAHEED

Author Information

Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal trilogy and a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Book and the O. Henry Award. Her short story 'Garments' was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. She is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and now lives in London.

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