After three decades away from home, exile Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasrin has once again caught the public’s attention. Her upcoming trip to Kolkata for a literary gathering has rekindled conversations around free speech, exile, and the legacy of one of South Asia’s most polarizing writers. For her supporters and admirers, her return to the City of Joy-after nearly 19 years-is a deeply personal homecoming and the closure of a painful chapter. Although Nasrin cannot freely return to Bangladesh-the country that forced her into exile-her journey to Kolkata represents a personal milestone, a re-connection with the city that has remained a home away from home.
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In 1994, a growing number of threats against her were escalating, mainly for her writings – specifically, for her novel Lajja (Shame) – which touched upon the sufferings of a Hindu family in the wake of religious persecution in Bangladesh. She then fled her home country and has lived in a variety of places over the last thirty years, while continuing to engage in literary activities.
Nasrin lived in Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, the USA and has also spent a significant part of her life in India. She was granted political asylum in Sweden and later lived in other European countries by joining a writer-in-residence programme. She has also lived in the USA through writing fellowships. She has been living in India since the mid-2000s, with a renewable resident permit.
During these years in exile, Nasrin continued to write novels, autobiographies, poetry, and essays, as well as continue her advocacy for women’s rights, secularism, and free speech. Her literary works are known widely in South Asia and across the world and have been translated into several languages.
Her upcoming visit to Kolkata for a literary event is expected to renew the interest in her literary and political journey. Many literary critics and commentators view this occasion as an important opportunity to revisit how exile affects a writer’s personal and intellectual life, the very space where her writings and persona are formed and reshaped.
Her visit to Kolkata will not end her exile from Bangladesh but it is seen by many as an end of a long spell of absence from a city that had always provided a home and an intellectual anchor during the difficult years of her life. Many of her readers, in India and Bangladesh alike, find an emotional and symbolic significance in this visit.
As preparations are underway for the event, Taslima Nasrin’s return to Kolkata is a powerful testament that even after decades and immense challenges, literature’s reach and resonance persist. More than thirty years after leaving her native land, her voice is once again central to discussions on free speech, human rights and the writer’s role in society.