Death To the Author

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Her surrender to authorities places her at the mercy of Begum Khaleda Zia, the female Prime Minister of an otherwise male-dominated country. The bail ruling had clearly been prearranged with Nasrin's lawyers, and she was allowed to keep her passport. Zia's government, which has depended on fundamentalist support in Parliament, evidently was hoping that the writer would quietly skip the country to enjoy her newfound celebrity in the West.

In her own country, even liberals have been loath to champion a deliberately sensational writer who chain-smokes, wears her hair in a distinctly untraditional bob and, at the age of 31, has been married and divorced three times. Her characterizations of men as insects and rapists, along with the darts she aims at religion, have made her an easy target for ultraconservatives who resent much of the social change that is transforming Bangladesh. In one of the world's poorest nations, Western-sponsored charitable enterprises provide education, health care and self-employment to some 12.5 million people, including many illiterate girls and women; such efforts have begun to take on the dimensions of culture clash as rural clerics resist what they see as a challenge to their authority and a sabotage of Muslim folkways.

The backlash is a familiar theme by now across the belt of Islamic societies from North Africa to South Asia. Nasrin, while intending to promote feminism, stumbled into a battleground bigger than she anticipated. Even her May 13 clarification of the Statesman quote rebounded against her. She wrote, "I hold the Koran, the Vedas, the Bible and all such religious texts to be out of place and out of time." Many of the faithful, however, see the time as out of joint. They have demonized Nasrin as a way of rewriting the script.