Burning Roses in My Garden

by Taslima Nasrin, Jesse Waters (Translator)

'Have I not, having kept a man for years, learnt that it's/ like raising a snake?/ So many animals on this earth, why keep a man of all things?' writes one of the world's most celebrated writers, Taslima Nasrin, in her first-ever comprehensive collection of poetry translated from the original Bangla into English.

The poems get to the heart of being the other in exile, justifying one's place in a terrifying world. They praise the comfort and critique the cruelty of a loved one. In these are loneliness, sorrow, and at times, exaltation.

Relying almost entirely upon the free verse form, these poems carry a diction which is at once both gentle and fierce, revealing the experiences of one woman while defining the existence of so many generations of women throughout time, and around the world.

Genres: Poetry, Feminism

196 pages, Paperback

Published September 25, 2023

About the author

Taslima Nasrin (Bengali: তসলিমা নাসরিন) is an award-winning Bangladeshi writer, physician, secular humanist and human rights activist, known for her powerful writings on women oppression and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas calling for her death. Early in her literary career, she wrote mainly poetry, and published half a dozen collections of poetry between 1982 and 1993, often with female oppression as a theme. She started publishing prose in the early 1990s, and produced three collections of essays and four novels before the publication of her 1993 novel Lajja (Bengali: লজ্জা Lôjja), or Shame. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned, blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of India. Since fleeing Bangladesh in 1994, she has lived in many countries, and lives in United States as of July 2016. Nasrin has written 40 books in Bengali, which includes poetry, essays, novels and autobiography series. Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books are banned in Bangladesh.'

Reviews

[Anwen Hayward · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up on a bit of a whim in Kitab Khana, Mumbai, without any knowledge about Taslima Nasrin and her background. I now realise that she’s a somewhat controversial figure, having loudly criticised Islam (the religion of her own family and upbringing) most notably in her novel, Lajja (now banned in Bangladesh, and published in English as Shame), to the extent that she has been subjected to multiple fatwas and is unable to return to her home country, and has also expressed support for the BJP, the Hindu nationalist party of India. As a white person, I don’t really feel that it’s my place to comment on the nuances of her politics, because I’m frankly not well-informed enough about the context of Nasrin’s own background or the roots of her criticisms, which seem to largely lie in her atheist convictions and her work on women’s rights, and I don’t believe it would be constructive to weigh in on something that I don’t fully understand. Regardless, I might have picked a less controversial author, had I known more about her, or perhaps I wouldn’t have.

(Full review at The Global Women's Library.)

[Meena Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

I personally didn't like this style of writing, however I salute the feminist intentions behind it. But the active support of the author towards political parties like the BJP also disappointed me quite a bit.
Some poems were quite beautiful, but not to the point where I'm in awe.

[Shikha S. Lamba]

My favourite poem in this collection is “Mosque Temple”.

This poem talks about something I have believed since I was seven years old.

While the style of writing wasn’t what I expected, many of the poems themselves stand out for their honesty and bravery.

It’s a powerful collection of feminist poems - if you can read them without any judgement about the writing style.