Nasreen Jahan is a novelist, short story writer, playwright and literary editor of the fortnightly Anyadin. She started writing short stories in the early eighties. It was only in 1993, after five short story collections, that she published her first novel, Urukkoo. The novel, which won the Philips Literary  Prize, portrays a woman struggling--and surviving--in a hostile and conservative world. Urukkoo was translated as The Woman Who Flew by Kaiser Haq and published by Penguin, India in 2012. 

 

In 2000, Nasreen Jahan received the prestigious Bangla Academy Award for her fiction. Among her other awards are the Alaol Literary Award in 1995 for children’s fiction. She is a prolific writer, with over fifty titles to her credit. Many of her plays have been successfully staged. She lives in Dhaka with her husband and daughter. 

 

Translations of  Nasreen Jahan’s short stories have appeared in journals and anthologies in Bangladesh and India. A Temporary Sojourn and Other Stories  includes some short stories that were translated earlier. However, most of the stories in this collection are new translations.