Sultana's Dream: Contemporary Fiction of Bangladeshi origin
Channel: British Library
Date: 2021-03-09

Sultana's Dream was the utopian creation of Begum Rokeya, a Bengali feminist writer and educator who is widely regarded as a pioneer of women's liberation in South Asia. In the year that Bangladesh turns 50 years old, Tahmima Anam and guests take this visionary work as the starting point to lead a conversation exploring fiction from across the Bangladeshi diaspora. 

Monica Ali’s first novel Brick Lane (2003) took the literary world by storm. It was shortlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and made into a film, released in 2007. Her second novel, Alentejo Blue, (2006) was followed by In the Kitchen (2009) and Untold Story (2011). She is a Granta Best Young British Novelist, and her next novel Love Marriage is out in 2022 (Virago). 

Nasima Bee is a performance poet, producer and creative practitioner. She’s a trustee for Manchester’s Young Identity, an advocate for Contact Theatre, and is the Project Coordinator at Manchester Bangladeshi Women’s Organisation, Ananna. She’s currently working on an audio commission with New Creatives North entitled Salt. 

Leesa Gazi is a writer, actor, filmmaker, and Joint Artistic Director of Komola Collective. Gazi directed the multi-award-winning documentary film Rising Silence, on the sexual violence survivors of the Liberation War of Bangladesh. The English translation of her Bengali novel, Rourob, is entitled Hellfire (Westland Books). Her current project is her feature film A House named Shahana.

Tahmima Anam is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Granta Best Young British Novelist, and winner of a Commonwealth Writers Prize. Her work has been published in Granta, The New York Times, and The Guardian. She was born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and lives in London. Her hotly-anticipated feminist satire on technology, The Startup Wife comes out in June (Canonbury).