Why should Eve 
                     always control her desire,  
                     always check her step?
                     Throttle her thirst….

                     Eve, wherever you find forbidden fruit
                     make sure that you taste it.

                     T. Nasreen. Translated from the Bengali by 
                     Prof. Kabir Chowdhury.

As I held the Taslima story up to the light, I couldn’t help but notice how it changed shape and how the colors intensified. Along the way memory and myth merged and the tale acquired a life of its own, a universal story with a hundred different authors. Somewhere along the way, I suspected, the real story had got lost. In its place a mythology emerged that various players fed and Taslima, ‘the writer’, acted out as part of her public persona. I stood in the wings watching the performance of a lifetime.               

In a strange way I was as wary of Taslima as I imagined she was of me. And there were long intervals when I became fixated on shadows, whispered allusions and minor characters, allowing myself to become caught up in the hullabaloo of the chase. Distracted by the mythology and the politics surrounding Taslima, I paused instead of moving on to discover the woman behind the fiction.

The circumstances of her exile meant that so far our paths had never crossed. Yet by following the trail of Taslima to Sweden there was every chance that this stalemate would end, and the book would take on a new energy. Yet instead of moving forward, I toyed with the idea of how the narrative might be affected if Taslima refused to take part. I was sure she would resist a stranger's attempts to probe behind the recent events in her life and I wanted more of her time and more of her real self than she was used to granting any of the hundreds of journalists beating a path to her door.

Would she allow me to look behind her public persona---would she agree to see me at all? Like most celebrities, there must be parts of her story she needed to control: certain improvisations, which might give way under closer scrutiny.

Taslima’s life is replete with stories which over time have become distorted or lost. She is a woman who has always made more enemies than friends and her critics extend well beyond right wing, religious factions. Petty jealousies, gossip and a history of snubbing people have helped build a wall of resentment; while the remoteness between the author and organised progressive--secular opinion, in Bangladesh, has created an impasse

The nearer I edged to Taslima, the stronger the feeling grew that the trail leading to her door would be messy. There were too many conflicting versions about the life and times of Taslima Nasreen and they all had the ring of truth, but with Taslima perched high up on a literary pedestal somewhere in the northern hemisphere, and me in Australia, we were safe from each other for the moment.

In the end, curiosity stamped out any flickers of hesitancy. Her friends and enemies---even those who claimed to be indifferent to the Taslima mythology---had buried me in an edifice of claims and counter claims. I needed to move beyond the artifice to try and discover her true self, the damaged self I sensed in her poetry and column writing;

Ali Riaz - Associate Professor of Politics and Government, Illinois State University
"The Crescent and the Pen challenges the conventional wisdom about the Taslima Nasreen saga.  The masterfully crafted personal narrative by Hanifa Deen is enriched with extensive interviews of the principal actors and is bound to keep the readers captivated."

David Ludden - Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
"Hanifa Deen has turned her personal quest for the true story of Taslima Nasreen's fame and exile into a compelling, judicious, and critically insightful bit of scholarly detective history.  She provides an eye-opening account of the cultural politics of literary celebrity in the present age of global anti-Islamism."

Riaz Hassan - Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Flinders University, Australia
"Hanifa Deen offers a brilliantly researched and masterly account of the saga of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen.  It deconstructs the mythology surrounding Nasreen's flight from Bangladesh in 1994, supposedly to escape the threats from Islamists.  The book evokes feelings of sympathy, pity, and admiration and makes compelling reading for all interested in Taslima Nasreen's saga and all its symbolism."

Shahram Akbarzadeh - Director, Centre for Muslim Minorities & Islam Policy Studies, Monash University
"Hanifa Deen has produced a rich and informative literary tapestry, matching the complexity of the subject matter that is filled with an intriguing mix of myth and reality.  Deen's meticulous treatment of the facts and her personalized account of Islamism, exile, and identity politics make this book essential reading."

J.C. Richards, Park University, Choice USA, May 2007
"This account reflects not only Nasreen’s evolution as a writer but also Deen’s as a critic. Recommended General Readers & Upper-division undergraduates through faculty."

The Australian, January 27, 2007
"The Crescent and the Pen is less an expose of religious intolerance in Bangladesh than an examination of such issues as Western stereotyping of Islam, the romantic desire for the role of the rescuers, and the disillusionment of the rescuers when they discover that their chosen heroine is far from perfect…. as the West steps up its campaign for ideological dissent in the Muslim world, this is an immensely timely reminder that dissidents tend to be unruly beasts rather than plaster saints."  
  Full Review    

David Pitt, "Booklist" - American Library Association 2007
"In 1993, Bangladeshi physician, writer, and activist Nasreen was accused of blasphemy, and a fundamentalist group issued a fatwa against her. With a price on her head, she left her home country and now lives in Europe . Her case brought a great deal of attention to Islamic fundamentalism and the persecution of writers, but, as Deen shows, the real story differs in several important ways from the "official" version, and there are many unanswered questions. For example, why, when writers around the world were coming to Nasreen's defense, did she receive virtually no support within her own country? It's a troubling book because it forces us to consider the possibility that Nasreen wasn't simply a victim of ideological persecution, but it deserves to be read for the author's informative and thoughtful reappraisal of the case. Timely and extremely relevant in the post-9/11 climate."

Reference & Research Book News
"The conventional story in the West holds that Bangladeshi writer Nasreen spoke out against Islamist fanatics, male oppression, and the curtailment of freedom of expression; was charged by the government with injuring religious sentiment; and was forced to go into hiding and flee her native country in 1994. Deen was puzzled by, for example, the lack of Bangladeshi women defending her, and thought there might be more to the story. Between 1995 and 2000, she conducted over a hundred interviews and travelled not only to Bangladesh several times, but also other places associated with Nasreen, and found a stranger story than she had imagined.”