Purabi Basu

Purabi Basu died in her sleep at about 1 pm on Friday 13 November 2026, US time, at her home in Port St. Lucie, Florida. She was 77. Because of the time difference, Bangladeshi newspapers reported her death on Saturday 14 November. Her husband, who was at her side, confirmed the news, saying she had long suffered from Parkinson's disease, had earlier had a stroke and had declined after a road accident. Her son Dipen Dutta announced her death in a message about her long and determined life. In line with her lifelong wish, arrangements were made to donate her body to the University of Miami for medical research.

Purabi Basu was born on 21 September 1949 in Munshiganj, in what was then East Pakistan, into a Hindu family. She was the youngest of three daughters; her father was a well known doctor in Munshiganj who encouraged her to write. She grew up reading the collected works of Bankim Chandra and Sarat Chandra. In the fourth grade a detective story she wrote appeared in a wall magazine, and she went on to write for the children's pages of newspapers such as Kochikanchar Asor, Sat Bhai Champa and Khelaghar. In 1959 one of her stories was published on the literary page of Dainik Pakistan, then edited by Ahsan Habib.

She passed her matriculation in humanities, studied science at intermediate level and earned a bachelor's degree in pharmacy from the University of Dhaka. In 1970 she moved to the United States, where she completed a master's degree in biochemistry at the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1972 and a PhD in nutrition at the University of Missouri in 1976. She then held a postdoctoral fellowship in pharmacology at the University of South Alabama.

Basu began her professional life as a research scientist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York and later taught at Cornell University, publishing articles in scientific journals. After many years abroad she returned to Bangladesh to work for Beximco Pharmaceuticals and then served as director of the health, nutrition and population division of BRAC, the country's largest development organisation. As of 2005 she was a senior executive at Wyeth Pharmaceuticals.

Alongside science she wrote throughout her life. Her first book, Purabi Basur Golpo, was published by Samabay Prakashani in 1989. Her short stories and essays dealt with neglected and oppressed people, religious minorities and the poor, and carried strong feminist ideas and a commitment to communal harmony. Her stories Radha Will Not Cook Today and Saleha's Desire became widely known. Other books include Nari Tumi Nityo, Nari Dipaboli and Amar E Dehokhani, a study of men and patriarchy, motherhood and creation, published by Bengal Publications. Her 2013 essay collection Prachya Puran O Prachye Puraton Nari examined women characters in eastern myths and folk tales across 18 Puranas and sub Puranas. Her first novel, Abinashi Jatra, published by Anyaprokash in 2014, followed a woman's struggle to survive alone abroad. In all she published more than 40 books of stories, essays, poetry and fiction, and she received the Anannya Literary Award in 2005 and the Bangla Academy Literary Award in 2013.

On 24 September 1967 she married the short story writer Jyoti Prakash Dutta, later a winner of the Ekushey Padak and the Bangla Academy Literary Award. They had met at the Secretariat Road home of Govinda Chandra Dev, the University of Dhaka philosophy professor killed in 1971, and married at her family home in Munshiganj before he left for higher studies in the United States. The couple had a daughter, Joyisha Ragini Dutta, and a son, Dipen Rag Dutta.

Her son described her as the strongest person he had ever known. She was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease about 20 years before her death, overcame cancer, was seriously injured in a car accident about five years before her death and suffered a major stroke two years before it.

Purabi Basu is remembered in Bangladesh as a rare figure who achieved distinction in both science and literature. Her fiction and essays gave voice to women, minorities and the marginalised in Bengali society, and her work on myth and gender brought a scientist's rigour to questions of patriarchy. Together with her husband she formed one of the best known literary couples in Bangladeshi letters.