Sultana's Dream

It is amazing how a woman from that age, despite being in an environment outrageously conservative, Begum Rokeya came up with such wonderful ideas and imagination.......more

This book has parts of two great works written by an Indian woman at the beginning of the 20th century. In Sultana's dream she reverses the purdah system (in which women were kept in seclusion) and has men kept in seclusion while women go out openly and run the country. It is very short, but makes e......more

The first known feminist utopian work of fiction. This 8 page short story was written by Begum Rokeya in Calcutta in 1905, a decade before Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland. The story neatly and humorously reverses the practice of purdah by putting all men into seclusion. It reminded me of an exper......more

I really enjoyed this book. My favorite part was, as always with me, the personal stories of the women. I wish they had included more passages from The Secluded Ones. The format of the book was confusing; I think it would have been effective to put the introduction to Rokeya's life at the very begin......more