Novel
Lajja: Shame
লজ্জা
Taslima Nasrin · 1993
Synopsis
Dhaka, December 1992. A mosque has just been destroyed in India, on 6 December, and reprisals fall on the Hindus of Bangladesh. Sudhamoy Datta, a doctor of Hindu origin, an atheist and a communist, who fought for independence, refuses to leave his country, while his friends and neighbours leave for India. His son Suranjan, in his thirties, who never finished his studies and spends his days in bed or talking with his friends, at first shares his ideas.
Context
The author wrote this book in the wake of the events it recounts and published it in 1993; banned in Bangladesh, it circulated there all the same. The fictional plot is thin: the atrocities of late 1992, and those of 1979 before them, are set out in detail, and the author voices her judgements sometimes directly, in pages that belong to the essay, sometimes through Suranjan. The French translation appeared from Stock as early as 1994, the same year as the English translation published in New Delhi.
Who it is for
A documentary novel of fewer than three hundred pages; it is worth knowing what happened in Ayodhya, where the Babri mosque stood.
Prizes and reception
A bestseller in India, banned by censorship in its own country, it led to its author's exile in 1994; its translation was hailed in the West as an event.