Taslima Nasrin, an award-winning novelist, celebrated memoirist, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writing on women's oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. Her thirty-seven books have been translated into thirty different languages. Some of them are banned in Bangladesh. The courage of her conviction has resulted in her being banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal both from Bangladesh and West Bengal, India. She has been prevented from returning to her country of birth for the last twenty years. Taslima Nasrin's works have won her the prestigious Ananda Puraskar in 1992 and 2000. She has been recognized with the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought from the European Parliament, the Kurt Tucholsky Award from the Swedish PEN, the Simone de Beauvoir Prize and numerous other awards and doctorates. Anchita Ghatak works with development organizations on issues of poverty, rights and gender. She has translated Sunanda Sikdar's prizewinning Bengali memoir Dayamoyeer Katha into English as A Life Long Ago.
