In 1993, more than two thousand fanatics surged out of the Purana Paltan Mosque in Dhaka, in protest against Taslima Nasreen’s novella, Shame, which mirrored the hypocrisy and religious and social bigotry in Bangladesh. Lusting for her death, a fatwa was announced, driving her to indefinite exile.

Today, seven years hence, she continues her crusade for women’s rights and Humanism at university seminars and critiques the tenets of religion in packed conferences worldwide. Today, Taslima is free from the confines of an intolerant system in Bangladesh, yet, trapped in this freedom. Even while she is felicitated and honoured by Jaques Chirac, Günter Grass and Salman Rushdie, in the quiet of her home in France, her soul wanders back to Bangladesh, the land of “her girlhood,” her homeland.