The Last Queen of Bengal: Queer Lives, Lost Stages—Sandip Roy in conversation with Tahmima Anam

Once the most celebrated female impersonator of Bengal’s jatra—a vibrant form of popular folk theatre—Chapal Bhaduri, better known as Chapal Rani, became famous playing goddesses, queens and heroines at a time when women did not perform on the jatra stage and female roles were traditionally played by men. He held audiences spellbound, becoming one of its greatest stars. But as women began to enter jatra in the 1960s, the world in which Chapal had reigned as its “queen” began to disappear. 

In 'Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal', writer and journalist Sandip Roy recovers the extraordinary life of a performer who resisted easy categories of gender, sexuality and identity. Drawing on years of conversations with Chapal and weaving oral history with imaginative vignettes, Roy creates both an intimate portrait of a singular queer survivor and a vivid chronicle of a vanished world of popular Bengali theatre.

For this special London event, Roy will be in conversation with acclaimed British Bangladeshi novelist Tahmima Anam about Chapal’s remarkable life, the histories that slip through the cracks, queer memory, performance, and Bengal.

The author

Sandip Roy

Sandip Roy is a writer, columnist and podcaster based in Kolkata. His work has appeared in the New York Times, BBC, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, The Hindu, Mint Lounge and elsewhere. For more than a decade, he edited Trikone, the world’s oldest magazine devoted to LGBTQ+ South Asian issues. He is also the author of the novel 'Don’t Let Him Know'. Chapal Rani, the Last Queen of Bengal is published by Seagull Books as part of its Pride List.
 

The guest

Tahmima Anam

Tahmima Anam is the award-winning author of 'A Golden Age', 'The Good Muslim', 'The Bones of Grace' and 'The Startup Wife'. A recipient of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and an O. Henry Award, she was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, she trained as an anthropologist at Harvard University and lives in London.
 

Praises for Chapal Rani
 

“Books about showbusiness are often predictable. This one is magical.”
—Asian Review of Books

“Roy painstakingly reconstructs a detailed and nuanced panorama of Bhaduri’s world.”
—Frontline