Shameless

by Taslima Nasreen

Translated by Arunava Sinha

English 296 pages 1 edition

‘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.