Nabaneeta Dev Sen was born in 1938 in Calcutta into a family of well known poets -- her father was Narendra Dev and her mother was Radharani Devi, who also wrote under the name Aparajita Devi. Her name was chosen for her by Rabindranath Tagore himself.

Nabaneeta obtained her Bachelor's in English from Presidency College, Calcutta. She was in the first batch of students of the Department of Comparative Literature, Jadavpur University, founded by Buddhadeva Bose, where she stood first in the Master's course. The following year she married Amartya Sen, then a young Lecturer of Economics at the University, who would later win the Nobel Prize. They were divorced in 1976. Nabaneeta went abroad for higher studies (M.A. with Distinction from Harvard; Ph. D. in Comparative Literature from Indiana University). She has now retired from the professorship in the Comp. Lit. Dept. at Jadavpur University. Her hobbies are reading, records, and travelling - often unplanned.

Her first publication was a book of poems: Pratham Pratyay in 1959. Ami Anupam, her first novel, came much later: it was published in 1976 in the 'Puja Issue' of the Ananda Bazar Patrika. She now has many books to her credit in a variety of genres: short stories, essays, travelogues, poetry, fiction, children's literature, verse-plays, humour. Even her most scholarly essays are remarkable for the charming prose and sense of humour. She is one of the most popular authors in Bengal today. She has received numerous awards, including the Sahitya Akademi.

Published December 11, 2003; Edited April, 2015

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