The Inconsequential Politician: Bangladesh: A Nation Coming of Age

When you read Bangladeshi author Sylvia Mortoza's nation-coming-of-age novel, "The Inconsequential Politician," don't expect The Last Hurrah with beards and saris. Her novel is about the birth of Bangladesh as seen through the life of...well...an inconsequential politician. Being a political novel, it ignores the rules of the hero novel, for politics grinds heroes into the bone meal on which tyrants feast. The stage dramatizes the story rather than the story dramatizing the stage. It is a novel also about outback realpolitik in a country few can even locate on a map, much less fathom as a political culture in which millions act as they do. We watch a nation born under a dark moon and thunderous skies, from the perspective of a bit player shunted mercilessly from little to little more by the forces he helps support.