Hummingbird News Desk
NEW DELHI, 27 MAY: Delhi-based Hindi novelist Geetanjali Shree has created history as her translated Hindi novel ‘Tomb of Sand becomes the first book in any Indian language to win the prestigious 2022 International Booker Prize. Originally published in Hindi as ‘Ret Samadhi’, the book is translated into English by Daisy Rockwell.
The book was described by the judges as a “loud and irresistible novel” and competed with five other titles from around the world for the prestigious 50,000 pounds literary prize.
“I never dreamt of the Booker, I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I’m amazed, delighted, honored, and humbled,” said Geetanjali Shree, in her acceptance speech.
“There is a melancholy satisfaction in the award going to it. ‘Ret Samadhi/Tomb of Sand’ is an elegy for the world we inhabit, lasting energy that retains hope in the face of impending doom.
The Booker will surely take it to many more people than it would have reached otherwise, that should do the book no harm,” she said.
Announcing the win, Frank Wynne, Irish translator and jury chair, said: “…We were captivated by the power, the poignancy and the playfulness of Tomb of Sand, Geetanjali Shree’s polyphonic novel of identity and belonging, in Daisy Rockwell’s exuberant, coruscating translation. This is a luminous novel of India and Partition, but one whose spellbinding brio and fierce compassion weaves youth and age, male and female, family and nation into a kaleidoscopic whole.”
“This (the award) is not just about me, the individual. I represent a language and culture and this recognition brings into larger purview the entire world of Hindi literature in particular and Indian literature as a whole,” said Delhi-based Shree, 64, the author of three novels and several volumes of stories. She described the win as “a bolt from the blue” that had left her “reeling”.
The International Booker Prize, earlier known as the Man Booker International Prize, was launched in 2004 to reward, every two years, a contemporary author of any nationality for a body of work published in English or available in English translation.
Since 2016, the 50,000 pound prize has been awarded annually to a book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. The award is split equally between the writer and the translator.
In 2021, French novelist David Diop and translator Anna Moschovakis won it for At Night All Blood is Black. In 2020, the award went to Dutch writer Marieke Lucas Rijneveld and translator Michele Hutchison for The Discomfort of Evening.
The story of the novel is set in northern India as an 80-year-old woman slips into a deep depression after the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. To her family’s consternation, she insists on travelling to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.
64-year-old Shree’s work has been translated into several languages including English, French, German, Serbian, and Korean and has received and been shortlisted for a number of awards and fellowships. ‘Tomb of Sand’ is one of her first books to be published in the UK.
Tags: #Geetanjalishree #booker #BookerPrize #TombOfSand #InternationalBookerPrize #HindiNovel
