Humayun Azad

Humayun Azad (died on 12 August 2004) was a Bangladeshi author, poet, scholar and linguist. He wrote more than seventy titles. He is regarded and honored as the most powerful and influential writer in the history of modern Bengali literature. His writings against religious fundamentalism received both positive and negative reviews. He was threatened and attacked by Islamist fundamentalist groups for his writings.

Azad was awarded the Bangla Academy Award in 1986 for his contributions to Bengali linguistics. In 2012, the Government of Bangladesh honored him with Ekushey Padak posthumously. Azad was born in the village of Rarhikhal in Bikrampur, Munshiganj district on 28 April 1947.

In 1992 Azad published the first comprehensive feminist book in Bengali titled Naari (Woman). In this work Azad painstakingly compiled the feminist ideas of the West that underlie the feminist contributions of the subcontinent's socio-political reformers and drew attention to the anti-women attitude of some acclaimed Bengali writers including Rabindranath Tagore.