Shameless (Paperback)

'My name is Suranjan. You don't recognize me? You wrote a novel about me. It was called Lajja.'

One day in Calcutta, Taslima suddenly finds herself face to face with Suranjan, the principal character from her controversial novel, Lajja. Persecuted in their native Bangladesh, Suranjan and his family have, like Taslima, moved to the city across the border.

But is life for a Hindu family from an Islamic nation any better in a country where a majority of the population happens to be Hindu? Leading poor, unmoored lives, exploited and frustrated at every step of the way, and always carrying with them the memories of a scarred communal history, Suranjan and so many others like him seem to lead incomplete lives in their so-called 'safe haven'.

Shameless, the explosive sequel to Lajja, is an uncompromising, heart-breaking look at ordinary people's lives in our troubled times.

TASLIMA NASREEN is a secular humanist, a human rights activist, and a prolific and bestselling author, who has faced multiple fatwas calling for her death. She was forced to leave Bangladesh by the government in the mid-1990s and has lived in exile since then. She now lives in New Delhi.

Taslima is the author of over forty works of fiction and non-fiction in Bengali, which have been published in over thirty languages worldwide.

ARUNAVA SINHA translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction, non-fiction and poetry from India and Bangladesh into English. More than eighty of his translations have been published so far across various countries, including India, UK, USA and Australia. He teaches translation and creative writing at Ashoka University in India, and is co-director, Ashoka Centre for Translation.