Taslima Nasreen

Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen could well take on rebel as her pen name. Hers has been among the most strident of voices that have taken on fundamentalism in her country.

The author, who has published more than 20 books in Bengali, some of which have been translated into many languages as they strike a responsive chord, especially with women, worldwide.

A doctor by qualification and writer by choice, Nasreen got into international limelight with her novel in 1993. Islamic clerics described as blasphemy and issued fatwa against her. Government confiscated passport and asked to stop writing. She quit her job in 1993 as a protest of government's decisions. Nasreen had to leave the country overnight to save her life and has been on run since then. She lived in Sweden for some time and moved on to France until recently. Now she has approached the Indian government for living in France.

Lajja depicts Muslim persecution of Bangladesh's Hindu minority. It is set in late 1992, when a long-standing animosity reached a crisis when Hindu extremists destroyed a mosque in Ayodhya. Enraged Muslims responded with a protracted persecution of Hindus throughout the subcontinent. This work recounts that campaign of retaliatory terror as experienced by one Hindu.

Her latest novel Amar Meyebela (My Girlhood) also ran onto trouble after Bangladesh Government banned the novel on the grounds that its contents might hurt the existing social system and religious sentiments of the people. All copies of the book were seized.

She has won several distinctions, including the Indian literary award Ananda Puroshkar; the European Parliaments’ Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Kurt Tucholsky Award from Swedish PEN. She won the UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for Amar Meyebela in 2004.

Counted today as a speaker for human rights, Nasreen has already written about 20 books, which include novels, essays and poetry. With several court cases and fatwas against her, many lesser individuals would have given up. But Taslima continues to lend her voice to tales of oppression and injustice, whether her own or anyone elses.  

Select Bibliography:
Prose: 
Dwikhandito/ Divided (2004)
Ka (2003)
Forashi Premik/ French Lover (2002)
Utal Hawa/ Strong Breeze (2002)
Amar Meyebela/ My Girlhood: An Autobiography  (2001) 
Motherhood A short story
Lajja/ Shame (1994)
Nosto Meyer Nosto Gadya
Nirbachito Kolam'

Poetry:
The game in reverse
Light up at midnight: Selected Poems