Synopses & Reviews
This groundbreaking book throws open a window on a world unknown to most Westerners. Taslima Nasrin revisits her early years from her auspicious birth on a Muslim holy day to the threshold of womanhood at fourteen in a small rural village during the years East Pakistan became Bangladesh. Set against the background of the fight for independence, Nasrins earliest memories alternate between scenes of violence and flight and images of innocent pleasures of childhood in her extended family.
A precocious child, Nasrins acute awareness of the injustice and suffering endured by her mother and other Muslim women cause her to turn from the Koran in early adolescence, and to begin a journey to redefine her world. Her growing awareness of the class discriminations, gender disparities, and growing religious orthodoxy and intolerance in her family and her rural village parallel the broader social and cultural upheaval emerging in the new nation, and foreshadow the growth of a feminist dissident courageous enough to defy the fundamentalist Muslim clerics.
“Nasrins voice is the voice of humanism everywhere.”-- Wole Soyinka
“I am sure you have become tired of being called ‘the female Salman Rushdie . . . but please know that there are many people in many countries working to . . . defend you against those who would cheerfully see you dead. . . . In the West, there are too many eloquent apologists working to convince people of the fiction that women are not discriminated against in Muslim countries or that, if they are, it has nothing to do with religion.”-- Excerpt from an open letter from Salman Rrushdie to Taslima Nasrin
About the Author
TASLIMA NASRIN became a doctor in 1984 and her novel Shame brought her international feminist acclaim. A death fatwa was issued against her in 1993, condemning her views on womens rights, health care, and religion; she has lived in exile since 1994. She has published eighteen books in thirty different languages and has received many awards, including Feminist of the Year, USA (1994), the Human Rights Award from the Government of France, the International Humanist award from the International Humanist and Ethical Union, and she has been named Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.