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.
