Motichur

A fiery proponent of the independence of women, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1880-1932) was denied formal education, but emerged as a leading thinker and writer of her time and founded a school for girls. Set against the backdrop of surging nationalism and reform in the twentieth-century Bengal, this selection of writings by Rokeya captures the true spirit of a South Asian proto-feminist who is every bit as radical as her contemporaries-Virginia Woolf and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. From 'Sultana's Dream', a canonical work of Rokeya, to writings on women's status in a patriarchal set-up, her comments on 'feeble' Bengali society, purdah [veil] system, religion, and the idea of a perfect housewife among others, this work will open up a factual, fictional, and fantastical-utopian world, which remained largely unknown and unheard outside Bengal.