Shameless By Taslima Nasreen

Opening her door to an unknown visitor, Taslima Nasreen finds herself face to face with Suranjan, the intense protagonist of Lajja, her novel that had got her exiled from Bangladesh.

Never published in Bengali, Shameless traces the story of Suranjan, his mother Kiranmoyee and his sister Maya, who live poor, unmoored, frustrated, cheated and preyed upon in Calcutta, their adoptive city. This is a family scarred and coming to terms with the fact that migrating to a ‘safe’ country is only half the job done — you will often find yourself neglected and abandoned in the new setting.

Searing in its take on statehood and statelessness, religion and fanaticism, and the deeply ingrained hypocrisy in man-woman relationships, Shameless is a ruthless, uncompromising, heartbreaking tale of ordinary people’s lives in our times.