Representation of Sex-workers’ Plight in Mahasweta Devi’s Bedanabala and Rizia Rahman’s Letters of Blood

Abstract

Mahasweta Devi’s Bedanabala and Rizia Rahman’s Letters of Blood portray the life of sex-workers in colonial Bengal and post-independence Bangladesh respectively. They are gripping tales of the marginalised lives of prostitutes. These two novels by Devi and Rahman can intimate great insight into the plight of sex-workers. Academic surveys and studies are not readily accessible or available to common people. Fiction has wider access and so novels like Mahasweta Devi’s Bedanabala and Rizia Rahman’s Letters of Blood can achieve what academic studies or narratives sometimes fail to do. This paper will attempt to analyse the potentials of the two novels in portraying the plight of sex-workers.