Was it Vikram Seth’s endorsement on the lovely front cover? Were English reading Indians in 2007 getting curious about stories told in the mother tongue? Was it because it was a perfectly carryable small format paperback of just the right thickness and price?Ĭhowringhee sold more than 25,000 copies. What made it click? The excellence of the content and the translation is not a sufficient answer, for if that were so, many more books should have succeeded before and since. Set in a hotel in Calcutta, telling stories of its workers and visitors, the novel enthralled its English readers as much as it had its Bengali ones. Penguin’s first real success, critical and commercial, came with Sankar’s Chowringhee, translated in 2007 from Bengali to English by Arunava Sinha. Penguin had always been publishing translations, from O V Vijayan’s Legends of Khasak to Haksar’s translations of secular Sanskrit classics, but not in even close to equal numbers to original writing in English. And when she left Macmillan, they stopped publishing translations though she revived it at Oxford University Press.Įven if one were to dismiss this as the story of translation lists in educational publishers dipping their toes in trade publishing, things weren’t all that different in Penguin India. By my time, the literature in translation list had lost its ballast even if it hadn’t ground to a stop.ĭuring this period, Mini Krishnan who was working for Macmillan, then Orient Blackswan’s neighbour in Chennai, had found funding outside the company and had begun publishing the dazzling Modern Indian Novels in Translation project. While V Abdullah had published a range of writers such as Vaikom Muhammad Basheer and Ashokamitran, Priya Adarkar published the pioneering Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature (1992), edited by Arjun Dangle, featuring Namdeo Dhasal, Baburao Bagul, Kumud Pawade and others. It also brings into view the fact that there is a vast world of literature with rich lineages which still needs to be discovered.When I edited my first translation in the early 2000s at Orient Blackswan, two major figures had done ground-breaking work and retired from the company. In a discussion with the Booker Prize team, she stated, "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. The novel Tomb of Sand is the first book that was originally written in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize and the first novel translated from Hindi to be recognised by the award.īorn in Manipuri and currently residing in Delhi, Geetanjali Shree is the author of three novels and many short collections and her works are translated into English, French, German, Serbian and Korean. Each shortlisted author and translator also receives £2,500 and a specially bound edition of their book. The writer's work is appreciated and celebrated with a reward of £50,000 which is divided equally between the author and translator. Submissions must be made between July and early October. ![]() The work must be published in the UK or Ireland between May 1, of the year prior and April 30, of the year of that award. The International Booker Prize for fiction translated into English is awarded annually to the author and translator of the best (in the opinion of the judges) eligible novel or collection of short stories. What's the process for submitting a novel? The elected judges are then required to read all the submissions and are held responsible for compiling a list of 12 or 13 books, among which 6 will be shortlisted and from these, 1 winner will be chosen. ![]() ![]() The main aim of the International Prize is to uplift and motivate more reading of quality fiction from around the world.Ī panel of five judges is appointed by the Booker Prize Foundation in consideration of the advice of the Booker Prize Foundation Advisory Committee. Later in 2015, when the rules of the original Booker Prize expanded, allowing writers of any nationality to participate, the International Prize evolved to become the mirror image of the English-language prize. The International Booker Prize started in 2005 as the Man Booker International Prize and became The International Booker Prize in 2019. On the contrary, the International Booker Prize is awarded to those novels that are written in another language, then translated to English and published in UK and Ireland. Is it the Booker Prize or International Booker Prize?Ī Booker Prize is awarded to a novel or literary work which are originally written in English and then published in UK and Ireland.
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