Everything About Nabanita Deb Sen

Nabanita Deb Sen, a former litterateur and an award-winning poet passed away on Thursday 07 November 2019 at the age of 81 on her residence due to cancer. She is a wife of former economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. Both Nabanita’s parents Narendra Deb and Radharani Debi were poets and was raised in an atmosphere of literature, poetry and music. Nabanita is graduated from Presidency College and did her post-graduation in Comparative Literature from Jadavpur University. Later, she did her Masters with distinction from Harvard University and completed her PhD from Indiana University.

• She is the first woman president of the Presidency Alumni Association.
• She is a poet, a novelist, a columnist and the writer of short stories and travelogues.
• Her Feminist take on Ramayana which was analysed from Sita perspective is best remembered on her life time.
• She is worked in Oxford University and the Colorado College in the US and taught Comparative Literature in Jadavpur University.
• Her all-time bestseller of Bengali literature, Truckbahone McMahone [also called On a Truck Alone to McMohan], her travelogue provides entertainment and delicate description of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh.

As a Literalist

• Nabanita published more than 80 books in Bengali on poetry, novels, short stories, plays, literary criticism, personal essays, travelogues, humour writing, translations and children’s literature.
• On 1959 Pratham Pratyay her first collection of poems was published.
• Her books are dealt with wide variety of social, political, psychological problems.
• Child abuse, and obsession, up rootedness, immigration and exiled in her novels, often used women as her central characters.

Books Written by Nabanita Deb Sen

• Naxalite movement (Ami Anupam, 1976)
• The identity crisis of Indian writing in English (1977)
• Second generation NRIs (1985)
• Breakdown of the joint family, life in old age homes (1988)
• Homosexuality (1995)
• Monsieur Hulor Holiday (1980)
• Facing AIDS (1999, 2002)

Travelogues

• Karuna tomar kon path diye
• Truckbaahane Mcmahoney
• Bama-bodhini
• Nati Nabanita
• Srestha kabita
• Sita theke suru.

Awards

• Gouridevi Memorial Award
• Mahadevi Verma Award (1992)
• Celli Award from Rockefeller Foundation(1993)
• Sarat Award from Bhagalpur Universityof Bihar (1994)
• Prasad Puraskar, Sahitya Akademi Award(1999).
• Bharatiya Bhasha Parishad Award,
• Harmony Award, Kamal Kumari National Award(2004)
• Mystic Kalinga Literary Award (2017)
• Padma Shri(2000)
• Sahitya Academy award