Author Geetanjali Shree’s book, Ret Samadhi, translated to English as Tomb of Sand by American writer and translator Daisy Rockwell, became the first Hindi language work of fiction to win the prestigious International Booker Prize. The ceremony happened in London and the prize was GBP 50,000, which will be split between Shree and Rockwell.
The book revolves around an 80-year-old protagonist, a woman whose story was called a “joyous cacophony” by the judges. She insists on travelling to Pakistan, to deal with the unresolved trauma the partition caused her when she was a teen. And with that, she would go over what it means to be a woman who is a feminist, a mother, and a daughter.
Translator Frank Wynne, the chair of the jury, said the novel about India and the partition has a “spellbinding brio and fierce compassion” that “weaves youth and age, male and female, family and nation into a kaleidoscopic whole.”
“I never dreamt of the Booker, I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I'm amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled,” said Shree expressed. “There is a melancholy satisfaction in the award going to it. 'Ret Samadhi/Tomb of Sand' is an elegy for the world we inhabit, a 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,” Shree added.
Daisy Rockwell, whose translation has been deemed as “exuberant” by the judges, has immaculately translated several Hindi and Urdu works including Upendranath Ashk’s Falling Walls, Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There has received the Modern Language Association’s ‘Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize’. During Rockwell’s interview with Her Circle, she revealed how she’s now more interested in translating women authors’ work to cut off the male gaze in literature.
This year’s International Booker Prize was also special because out of the six shortlisted books, five were by female authors and three had women translators too. These include Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur from Korean; A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls from Norwegian; Heaven by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Samuel Bett and David Boyd from Japanese; Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle from Spanish; and The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft from Polish.
Image Courtesy: Twitter.com/TheBookerPrizes