Take a deep dive into the 2022 Booker International Prize-winning novel, Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell. Assistant Professor of English Amrita Ghosh hosts an online conversation with the author and the translator followed by an open Q&A session.
Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree’s playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries or genders.
About the author
Geetanjali Shree is the author of three novels and several story collections, and her work has been translated into English, French, German, Serbian and Korean. Shree was born in Mainpuri, India, in 1957. Tomb of Sand is the first of her books to be published in the UK. She has received and been shortlisted for a number of awards and fellowships, and currently lives in New Delhi.
About the translator
Daisy Rockwell is a painter, writer and translator living in Vermont, US. She has translated a number of classic works of Hindi and Urdu literature, including Upendranath Ashk’s Falling Walls, Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her 2019 translation of Krishna Sobti’s A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize.
About the host
Amrita Ghosh is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literatures at University of Central Florida in the department of English. Her book on Kashmir's new literature and visual texts is upcoming and she has recently co-edited a collection titled, Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Re-envisioning.
About Tomb of Sand
Tomb of Sand is Winner of the 2022 Booker International Prize and the English PEN Award. (Published by Titled Axis Press). The novel is about an eighty-year-old woman protagonist in northern India, who slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a hijra person – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more 'modern' of the two. The novel pushes borders and boundaries, as ‘M’a insists on travelling to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.
This event is hosted by the English Department in collaboration with Radical Books Collective and UCF’s India Center.
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