Namita Gokhale, author and co-director of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival comments, “This year’s edition of BookMark offers the industry a superb new development to facilitate the translation of Indian writers, the Global Translation Rights Catalogue. The publishing industry is indeed the heart of the Zee Jaipur Literature Festival. It is gratifying to see a significant space emerging for the exchange of opportunities in the dynamic and nuanced world of translation.”
A Blessed Life – originally published in Hindi as Sur ki Baradari is written by Yatindra Mishra and translated by Ira Pande. In this lilting narrative, Yatindra Mishra draws out the legendary Bismillah Khan on his life and work. Yatindra Mishra is a poet, editor and music aficionado and an art and cinema critic. With three collections of poetry he has also written books about the classical singer Girija Devi and a book of conversations with the dancer Sonal Mansingh. Ira Pande is an accomplished Hindi translator; her translation of Manohar Shyam Joshi’s T’ta Professor, won the Crossword and the Sahitya Academy Award for best translation.
Autobiography of an Unknown – originally published in Kannada as Ajnatanobbana Atma Charitre is written by Krishnamurthy Hanuru and translated by LS Shankara Swamy. Girish Karnad says about this novel, “An attempt to categorize this novel as history, mythology, folktale or poetic narrative will be an insult to its rich, creative ecology. A chronicle of one of Tipu Sultan’s soldiers, the novel uses all these literary forms slipping effortlessly from one to the other. Relegating the boundaries of space and time to the background, it escapes them.”
Krishnamurthy Hanuru’s three novels and many short stories encapsulate folk life and try to conceive history from the point of view of a common man. He is the recipient of many awards. LS Shankar Swamy is a well known translator of short stories, plays and parodies of Kannada into English.
The Last Puff and Other Stories – originally published in Hindi as Neela Scarf is written by Anu Singh Chaudhary and translated by Manisha Chaudhry. This is an anthology of contemporary short stories in Hindi that depict life in different parts and among different social classes in India. Anu Singh Choudhary is a journalist, writer and documentary filmmaker whose debut collection of short stories is titled Neela Scarf.
Fluent in English and Hindi, Manisha Chaudhry’s translation A Street in Srinagar of Chandrakanta’s Hindi novel Ailan Gali Zinda Hai was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
Movement – originally published in Assamese as Jangam is written by Debendra Nath Acharya and translated by Amit R Baishya. Jangam is a fictional account of the long forgotten march of Indian refugees from erstwhile Burma to British India in World War II. Debendra Nath Acharya was an eminent engineer and scholar whose novel Jangam, posthumously received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1984. Amit R Baishya specializes in postcolonial literature and cultural studies and is currently completing a book manuscript on violence, terror, and survival in post-1980 fiction from Northeast India.
Opening the Way Ahead – originally published in Rajasthani as Samhin Khulato Magar is written by Nand Bharadwaj and translated by Chandrika Das. Set in a small village near Jodhpur, this novel traces the life of Satyavati, a school teacher, who struggles to strike a balance between her family’s traditional values and those of a changing society in which she lives. Nand Bhardwaj writes in both Rajasthani and Hindi and is a well-known media figure. He has received the Sahitya Akademi Award, Bihari Award, Bhartendu Harishchandra Award and Suryamall Shikhar Puraskar. Chandrika Das is a NET qualified gold medalist from the University of Rajasthan.
Stateless – originally published in Bangla as Akta Desh Chai is written by Prafulla Roy and translated by John W Hood. Kalimuddin and his family are victims of history and war, moving from Bihar to Dhaka to Mumbai in search of a safe and prosperous life. Honoured by the Sahitya Akademi, Prafulla Roy, is a prolific fiction writer whose writing depicts powerful and authentic realities in urban and rural situations. He has written more than 150 books, both novels and short stories. Hood divides his time between Melbourne and Kolkata, writing about Indian and Bangladeshi cinema and translating Bengali literature.
Fence – originally published in Gujarati as Vaad is written by Ila Arab Mehta and translated by Rita Kothari. Fence gives us an insight to communalism and religious segregation beyond that provided by social scientists.
Born into a family of writers, Ila Arab Mehta is a renowned writer of Gujarati literature with many of her works included as part of university curriculums across Gujarat. Her Batris Putli Ni Vedana is considered to be the first feminist novel in Gujarati literature. Rita Kothari is the author of Translating India: The Cultural Politics of English, The Burden of Refuge: Sindhi Hindus of Gujarat and Memories and Movements: Borders and Communities in Banni, Kutch.
Unspoken Things – originally published in Hindi as Kuch Ankahi is written by Mridula Behari and translated by Lise McKean. Unspoken Things is an extraordinary saga set in India of a daughter, mother, and grandmother that takes the reader on a journey spanning half a century from the early 1940s.
Mridula Behari is an award-winning author, novelist and playwright who has authored 15 books including several short story collections, novels and plays. Kuch Ankahi is the first English translation of many of her books. McKean has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Sydney and an MA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawai’i-Manoa.
