Detached Belonging

Dilruba Z. Ara

Dilruba Z. Ara born in Dhaka, Bangladesh and developed an interest in books at a very early age. She was nurtured on Greek mythology by her father, and her mother read her Indian fairytales as bedtime stories. Involved in literary activities throughout her childhood and adolescence, Dilruba had her first story published when she was eight years old. At the age of twenty, as a third-year honours student of English language and literature at the University of Dhaka, she met and married her husband, a Swedish air-force officer. This precipitated her move to Sweden, where she continued her education at Gothenburg University, obtaining degrees in English, Swedish, Classical Arabic and linguistics and then a teaching degree from Lund University. She now teaches Swedish and English in Sweden.