The Face: Third World Blues

by Tahmima Anam

One of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists and winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best First Book Award, Bangladeshi-born author Tahmima Anam’s The Third World Blues movingly explores the double binds placed on people who immigrate to the “developed” world.

You arrive in America for the first time, a misfit on levels you cannot entirely grasp—if you could grasp them, you would not be the misfit you are. Your separateness comes to define you; you call it your “thirdliness.” You hope to overcome it, at first; soon you realize it is inescapable, and begin to question your desire to escape it.

In The Third World Blues, Tahmima Anam tells a story of immigration, “passing,” and self-construction as she comes to the United States for college from Bangladesh, falls in love, gets married, moves to the United Kingdom, and has children—all filtered through the contradictory expectations placed on those who are inevitably seen as “foreign.” With humor, precision, and verve, Anam explores life between contexts, and the possibilities, openings, and fissures that emerge from such mobility.

Alternately philosophical, funny, personal, political, and poetic, the short memoirs in The Face series offer unique perspectives on race, culture, identity, and the human experience from some of our most dynamic literary writers.

100 pages, Paperback

Published January 26, 2021

About the author

Tahmima Anam is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Granta Best Young British Novelist, and winner of a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her work has been published in Granta, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and lives in London, where she is on the board of ROLI, a music technology startup founded by her husband.

The Startup Wife (07/13/2021) is her latest novel.