Exile: A Memoir

On 22 November 2007 the city of Kolkata came to a rude screeching halt as a virulent mob of religious fanatics took to the streets. Armed with a fatwa from their ideologues the mob demanded Taslima Nasrin leave the city immediately. While the Kolkata Police allegedly stood watching mere dumb witnesses to such hooliganism a morally intellectually and politically bankrupt Left Front government tottering under the strain of their thirty-year-old backward-looking rule decided to ban her book and drive her out of Kolkata a city she has always considered her second home.Dark provocative and at times surreal Exile is a moving and shocking chronicle of Taslima Nasrin’s struggles in India over a period of five months set against a rising tide of fundamentalism and intolerance that will resonate powerfully with the present sociopolitical scenario.