Taslima Nasreen’s Shameless Now Available as an eBook!

14 April 2020

Is proud to announce SHAMELESS The explosive sequel to Lajja, is an uncompromising, heart-breaking look at ordinary people’s lives in our troubled times.

Out now on Kindle!

‘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.

***

‘I wrote Shameless in 2007 while forced to live under house arrest in Kolkata. Now, in 2020, to save humanity from the contagious and deadly Covid-19, we are placing ourselves in self-quarantine or social isolation. But humans are social animals, we cannot live totally alone. We need ways to imagine a world where these hindrances don’t hold us back. And what better way to do that than read books, write? When I was under house arrest, I spent my time writing, imagining the friends who could not come by. You can choose what you want to do when you find yourself stuck at home too. What about reading Shameless? Stay home, stay safe, till we overcome this crisis and win the war against the virus’ – Taslima Nasreen, author

‘We’re living through times like we’ve never known before; many things that we would take for granted have changed in the recent past. But reading, and writing, can never stop. The pleasure of reading a new book is like no other, and we’re delighted today to be able to bring to readers Taslima Nasreen’s novel Shameless, translated by Arunava Sinha, made available exclusively on the digital platform. Our newest books, their stories, ideas and emotions, will continue to reach you: for as a reader you are never isolated from the human community.’ – Udayan Mitra, Publisher, Literary, HarperCollins India

‘Translating Shameless was a frantic trip as I, like the future reader, was sucked in deeper into the intensity of the novel, the confusions of its characters, and their self-discovery. The text is almost never calm, and as the translator I felt the same agitation and anxiety of the narrator as well as the characters, all of whom came alive for me off the pages’ – Arunava Sinha, translator

About the author:
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.

About the translator:

Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction, non-fiction and poetry from India and Bangladesh into English. More than fifty of his translations have been published so far in India, ten in the UK, and six in the US. He teaches translation and creative writing at Ashoka University in India, and edits the Library of Bangladesh series of translated books from Bangladesh. He has won several translation awards.

About HarperCollins India:

HarperCollins India is a subsidiary of HarperCollins Publishers. HarperCollins India publishes some of the finest writers from the Indian subcontinent and around the world, publishing approximately 200 new books every year, with a print and digital catalogue of more than 2000 titles across 10 imprints. HarperCollins India authors have won almost every major literary award, including the Man Booker Prize, the DSC Prize, the New India Foundation Award, the Atta Galatta Prize, the Shakti Bhatt Prize, the Publishing Next Award, the Sahitya Akademi Award and the Crossword Book Award. HarperCollins India also represents some of the finest publishers in the world, including Oneworld, Bonnier Zaffre, Usborne, Dover and Lonely Planet. HarperCollins India is also the only publisher to have been awarded the Publisher of the Year Award three times: at Publishing Next in 2015, and at Tata Literature Live! in 2016 and 2018.

Buy your Kindle edition now

Page extent 296 | Rs. 399 For interviews, reviews and excerpts, please email or contact Jaseya.Fazili@harpercollins.co.in; +91-9769079212