Gopa Majumdar's translation is simple and keen. Short, staccato construction and exposition of ideas that meander through the pages with very little contrivance, are tellingly revealing of both the author's style and the translator's expertise.

my girlhood is manifestly conceived and fledged out in the native spring of Bangladesh. It oscillates back and forth between the evolution of an embryonic nation and the progress of a nascent childhood. Both brim over with the struggle to surmount and subdue damning vicissitude. The book abounds in the sights, sounds, flavours and smells of the warm, snoozing, serene life of a young girl. It impresses upon the reader the lingering warmth of pleasant reminisces that were dear to the parallel lives, the nation's as also Nasrin's.

The narrative is neither linear nor sequential. The writer flits in and out of reveries just as one rambles on about disconnected but distinct instances entrapped in memory, in no particular order or preference. These vivid images of awakening childhood and the stirrings of the little girl, simultaneously naïve and wanton, turn towards the unflinching gaze of the author, not for inspection, but for introspection.

Memories stored in my girlhood pull at the reader's heartstrings. Nasrin's insightful observation on her parents' relationship is sensitive. It speaks of two demoniac, fanatic dogmas, her father's obsession with education, and her mother's stubbornness regarding religion, being yoked together to cause agony to the child. These are sewn into ironic refrains, as 'cheera, muri, gur'. The oft-repeated line crawls across the landscape of the book, an indubitable reminder of the fact that basic needs are the same everywhere. And when 'cheera, muri, gur' turn out to be wealth, others in keeping, the irony comes full circle. It reports of the paradigms that were being thwarted callously at the time of war. This technique is akin to Yeats' use of symbols in Celtic poetry.

my girlhood speaks of the simplicity and natural delight in things that one is accustomed to right from childhood. These are the rightful staple of existence of every child. To rob one of these, is to nullify one's entity. The unwarranted, forced precocious ness bestowed upon the girl by ugly 'snakes' is just as deplorable as the bloody operatic of war being played out in the nation at large. The book's transferring gaze explores the social, religious, cultural ethos, and each is commented upon lavishly.

my girlhood is about the life of a country as much as it is about the life of a person. By the time one arrives at the denouement… "I continued to grow up", one has a feeling of emerging from a bleak, profound, heavy eon, where the drama of one excrutiating life has already been staged, where a lifetime of possibilities has already been addressed…
This remains the singular achievement of this prolific account; it affects the reader enormously.
 

 http://www.hindustantimes.com/2002/Oct/03/181_59953,001100040007.htm