Bookers Prize awarded to Ms. Geetanjali Shree

हिन्दी जगत के लिए ये सचमुच बहुत बड़ी उपलब्धि है! गीतांजलि श्री को हार्दिक बधाई!

गीतांजलि श्री के उपन्यास 'रेत समाधि' के अंग्रेज़ी अनुवाद Tomb of Sand को बुकर प्राइज़ मिला।

Finally!!!.....

The Bookers Prize is awarded to Geetanjali Shree's Hindi Translated book - Tomb of Sand.

Author GeetanjaliShree's Hindi novel Tomb of Sand' has become the first book in any Indian language to win the prestigious International Booker Prize.

At a ceremony in London on Thursday, the New Delhi-based writer said she was completely overwhelmed with the "bolt from the blue" as she accepted her prize, worth GBP 50,000 and shared with the book's English translator, Daisy Rockwell.

As said earlier in of the posts, this time all the shortlisted six books are translated works.And this happens to be the first entry of an Indian book. Thus, encouraging the regional languages is the order of the day! 

About the book:

Tomb of Sand begins as a kind of comedy of manners, centred on a middle-class Indian family where grandfather has just died and eighty year-old grandmother is staying in bed, turned to face the wall. Son Badi is about to retire, daughter-in-law Bahu and independent daughter Beti dance warily around each other, and one of the two grandsons has moved to Australia.

The story is told from multiple perspectives, but it is grandma who is the central figure. She goes missing for several days and when she is found she goes to stay with Beti. The mother-daughter relationship becomes strangely inverted and grandma also develops a close relationship with the hijra (transsexual) Rosie. And then she visits Pakistan, taking Beti with her, and there are flashbacks to her memories of Partition and her life as a child.

There are political ruminations in this, on borders and identity. There are metafictional elements, with observations on its relationship to the classic novels of Partition, hints at a concealed narrator, and so forth. There are elements of magical realism, with some of the story told from the perspective of birds. And there is a general playfulness with language (and a translator's afterword discusses some of the problems this posed). But none of this dominates or obscures the basic story, which moves along at a brisk pace in chapters of just a few pages. Tomb of Sand also remains light-hearted and playful, often verging on the comic, despite its serious themes and dark elements.

‘Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself’.

Geetanjali Shree

When I heard that Shree is the first Indian writer to win the International Booker Prize, I was a little confused. I thought there were already five other Indians, VS Naipul, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Kiran Desai and Aravind Adiga who have already lived out their own red carpet moments. Turns out, The Man Booker and The International Man Booker are separate awards. Both have a ‘Man’ in them, which by the way does not imply some strange sexist connotation but the fact that the Man Group is their main sponsor. Both awards mirror the quality and the integrity of language and content. Both the prize money is also the same. But what separates them is that the ‘International’ award is given to an author of any nationality for a book that is TRANSLATED into English. And the prize money is also split between the author and the translator. Technically, this becomes a museum for the languages, where the multiple tongues of the world can be showcased. And this was where all the four- Geetanjali Shree, Daisy Rockwell, Hindi and English walked hand in hand to smash the glass ceiling and grab the prestigious award❣️ 

Why is the book so special? Perhaps because in an era where India’s past and purity are constantly dug up and debated, a woman armed with a humble tool has finally arrived. She dug into the past with her pen and rose above all the petty language war to tell the tale of a nation torn by Partition. A much needed story that humankind could do with right now. And without altering or burying Indian history, she managed to create world history. 

But turning the ‘Ret Samadhi’ into the ‘Tomb of Sand’ was not an easy job. Rockwell feels it was one of the most difficult work she had to translate, because of the ‘experimental nature’ of Shree’s writing and her unique use of language. We all know how originality can easily lose itself in translation. Since it eventually found its way, obviously Rockwell has managed to keep the ‘exuberance’ and the ‘passion’ alive.💕

 In the social media celebrities are born every moment. But not everyone leaves behind their impressions in the Hall of Fame. Popularity is like a double edged sword. And if the blunt side strikes you it could go to your head, making you lose your motivation and ALL your creativity. Instant successes do that. But there is no substitute for hard work. Sometimes it takes years and years and years of patience and commitment to become an overnight celebrity. And Geetanjali Shree is the perfect example! ❤️