Burning Roses in My Garden

<i>Have I not having kept a man for years learnt that its/ like raising a snake?/ So many animals on this earth why keep a man of all things?</i> writes one of the worlds 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 <i>the other in exile</i> justifying ones 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.