Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s versatility was mixed always with a penetrating but forgiving sense of humour | The Indian Express

Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s versatility was mixed always with a penetrating but forgiving sense of humour | The Indian Express

Written by Dipesh Chakrabarty |Updated: November 9, 2019 9:14:40 am

The writer is Lawrence A. Kimpton distinguished service professor of history, South Asian languages and civilizations, University of Chicago

Nabaneeta Dev Sen’s versatility was mixed always with a penetrating but forgiving sense of humour

Finding herself a divorcee and a single mother when she was not even 40, she went to Indiana University in the United States for her doctoral degree and secured a teaching position in Jadavpur on return.

Nabaneeta Dev Sen (1938-2019).

Nabaneeta Dev Sen, the popular, award-winning, and feminist Bengali author, poet, teacher, raconteur, and literary critic, passed away in Kolkata on November 7. She had been fighting cancer for a while. She was 81 at the time of her passing. Born to acclaimed writer-parents, Narendra Dev and Radharani Dev, she married, in 1959, Amartya Sen, the economist who would later go on to win the Nobel prize.