About the BookAbout the Author

Rajalukshmee Debee’s novel is about the pleasures and pains of growing up. As sensitive as the touch-me-not plant after which she is named, and despite her socially deprived background, the brilliant and attractive Lajuklata seems to have a promising future before her. Her early brilliance wins her a scholarship to college, but Lajuklata’s passage to maturity in a little village in East Bengal before the partition is fraught with social difficulties. The emerging political tensions of caste and religion exert a profound influence on the young girl, whose fate appears to be closely interlinked with that of her country. The powerful issues of nationalism, caste and emerging sexuality are given a treatment that is simple without being simplistic and complex without being made complicated.

DEBEE, RAJLUKSHMEE, is a poet and writer in Bengali. Translated from the Bengali by the author.