Poet Biography

Taslima Nasrin

TASLIMA NASRIN was born in 1962 in Mymensingh, Pakistan, which, in 1971, became known as the country of Bangladesh. Taslima had endured physical assaults by fundamentalist mobs, house arrest in India, three fatwa calling for her death, and the banning of her book, Shame, due to her outspoken criticism of the Islamic religion with respect to women’s equality. Her first book of poems appeared in 1984. Since then she has become a leading poet of Bangladesh—an irony since she has had to live in hiding within, and then in exile from, her native land. She has lived in Europe and currently resides in the U.S. The author of more than 30 books, she is homeless everywhere.