Based on childhood experiences of his partner Zaved Mahmood, who was born in 1970 to Bengali parents in Dhaka, the book "Scenes from Early Life" introduces readers to the texture of daily life in Bangladesh during wartime.
"It treats the 1971 war as a backdrop to an intimate family story. I wanted not to tell the grand history in total, or look at people whose lives were most changed by the events, but to look at some ordinary lives which were inflected but not forever altered by these events," Hensher told PTI here after the book was launched at the Oxford Bookstore recently.
When asked how the book has proved to be a healing experience for his partner, the writer said, "It is more about coming to terms with the aftermath of the war and his experience. But it is an emotional journey, as I suppose reading a recreation of your childhood would be for anyone if the recreation is done by a technically experienced novelist".
In 2006, Hensher was listed as one of the 100 most influential LGBT people in Britain, and in 2003 as one of Granta's twenty Best of Young British novelists.
Weaving historical anecdotes with fiction, the book comes across as a hybrid of novel and memoir.
"It's easiest to think of it as a novel. It's set in a historical setting, but it isn't a history
