The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Bangladeshi young writer and novelist Tahmina Anam's "A Golden Age' about the birth of modern-day Bangladesh has been short listed for this year's Guardian First Book award worth 10,000 pounds.

Tahmima Anam's first novel, A Golden Age, was published by John Murray in 2007.

In all, five books have been shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award: three novels, a biography and a work of non-fiction, according to The Guardian. Other books include Catherine O'Flynn's "What Was Lost", which is part mystery, part dissection of modern consumer society, Dinaw Mengestu's depiction of an Ethiopian immigrant's quest for a fully realised life in "America, Children of the Revolution", and Rosemary Hill's biography of the architect and originator of the Gothic revival, "Augustus Pugin".

She was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh in 1975, and grew up in Paris, New York City, and Bangkok,as a consequence of her father's career with the Unicef.

Tahmina was trained as an anthropologist, earning a PhD from Harvard University. In 2005 she completed an MA in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, London, and is the recipient of a Writing Fellowship from the Arts Council of England.

She comes from an illustrious literary family in Bangladesh. Her father Mahfuz Anam is the editor and publisher of The Daily Star, one of the leading English newspapers of the country. Her grandfather Abul Mansur Ahmed was a renowned satirist and politician whose works in Bengali remain popular to this day.

Tahmina's first novel was published in March, 2007 from John Murray. She picked Bangladesh Liberation War as her first subject to write the novel A Golden Age. She was inspired by her parents who were freedom fighters during the war.

Tahmima also researched about the war which covered the central part of her post graduation. For the benefit of her research, she stayed in Bangladesh for two years and took interview of hundreds of war fighters. She also worked in the set of Tareque and Catherine Masud's critically acclaimed film 'Matir Moina' (The Clay Bird) which reflects the happenings during that war.

The shortlist for Guardian award also includes Indian origin journalist-writer Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book on US hostilities in Iraq.

The Guardian First Book Award is considered unique among book prizes as it is open to all first-time authors and because of the input of readers' groups. The Guardian said that this year was a very strong year for first-time authors.

Claire Armitstead, the Guardian's literary editor, said there was an extraordinary strength and diversity on the shortlist. "In the age of mass-market retailing, it is wonderful that the biography of a 19th-century architect could be right up there," she said.

Armitstead is joined on the panel this year by the novelists Kamila Shamsie and Maggie O'Farrell, presenter Mariella Frostrup, journalist and author Simon Jenkins, Phillippe Sands QC and the Guardian's features editor, Katharine Viner. The prize will be announced in December.