Tomb of Sand, Daisy Rockwell’s English translation of author Geetanjali Shree’s Ret Samadhi, has become the first book translated from Hindi to make the International Booker prize longlist.
The book narrates the story of an 80-year-old woman who struggles to cope with her husband’s death. After dealing with her depression, she goes on to visit Pakistan, to confront the past she left behind at the time of the Partition.
Penguin is releasing the English translation in India in March 2022.
Shree’s book is one of 13 titles to make the longlist for the prestigious award for translated fiction. Six of these books will be shortlisted to compete for the GBP 50000 prize, which will be split evenly between the writer and the translator. The shortlist will be announced on April 7 and the winners will be revealed on May 26.
Born in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh in 1957, Shree currently lives in New Delhi. The author has received and been shortlisted for a number of awards and fellowships. Tomb of Sand is the first of her books to be published in the UK. The book has been published in the country by Tilted Axis.
Two more titles from Tilted Axis have also been selected for the International Booker prize 2022 longlist: Happy Stories, written by Norman Erikson Pasaribu and translated by Tiffany Tsao, and Love in the Big City, written by Sang Young Park and translated by Anton Hur.
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Other titles in the longlist are: Paradais, written by Fernanda Melchor and translated by Sophie Hughes; Heaven, written by Mieko Kawakami and translated by Samuel Bett and David Boyd; Elena Knows, written by Claudia Piñeiro and translated by Frances Riddle; The Book of Mother by Violaine Huisman and translated by Leslie Camhi; More Than I Love My Life by David Grossman and translated by Jessica Cohen; Phenotypes by Paulo Scott and translated by Daniel Hahn; A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse and translated by Damion Searls; After the Sun by Jonas Eika and translated by Sherilyn Hellberg; The Books of Jacob, written by Olga Tokarczuk and translated by Jennifer Croft; and Cursed Bunny, which is written by Bora Chung and translated by Anton Hur.
The International Booker Prize was established in 2005 to honour an author and translator equally for a single work of fiction translated into English and published in the UK. It was previously known as the Man Booker Prize. Last year’s winner was At Night All Blood Is Black, written by French novelist David Diop and translated by Anna Moschovakis.