A review by dharaiter
Sultana's Dream by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain

5.0

Sultana's Dream is a science fiction novella written in 1908. It's set in a Utopian Ladyland where women have free themselves from 'Purdah' and societal oppression and have created a world that runs on education, logic, the religion of love and truth, and futuristic technology (for that time) like laborless farming, cloud condensers, weather control, solar ovens, and hover cars.

The short story was written by Begum Sakhawat Hossain, a Muslim, Bengali, feminist, thinker, writer, educator, and political activist. I am mentioning these adjectives so that you can count the barriers she had broken then. Because of her unconventional ideas, anti-conservatism, bold literature, and advocacy for women's rights, she is widely regarded (yet unknown) as a pioneer of women's liberation in South Asia.

I am sure being a future-minded woman and a thinker in the 1910s, she must have been belittled a lot in her time. But look at that. Here I am, a woman, still talking about her on a futuristic technology more than 100 years later. This, to me, is the ultimate success.