The Man Booker Prize is well-known to Sri Lankans. In 1992, Sri Lankan origin Canadian writer Michael Ondaatje won the Man Booker Prize for his novel, ‘English Patient’. In 1997, our neighbouring-country-author Arundhati Roy won the same Prize for her novel, ‘The God of Small Things’. Salman Rushdie’s famous novel ‘Midnight’s Children’ also won the award in 1981 - in 1993 it was chosen as the best Booker Prize novel in 25 years. Although unable to secure the title after Ondaatje, a few Sri Lankan writers’ books came to the longlists and shortlists of the Prize in the following years.
Man Booker Prize and International Booker Prize
The major issue in the Man Booker Prize is that only the native or non-native English writers are honoured by it, while the others couldn’t compete for it whatsoever. Because of this, in June 2004, another award was introduced as a compliment for the Man Booker Prize. It is International Booker Prize, by which authors that write in other languages are conferred on.
Since 2016, the International Booker Prize has been given annually to a single book translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. Also, the prize is shared equally between the author and the translator.
On May 26, the International Booker Prize had announced its 2022 winner: it is ‘Tomb of Sand’ by Geetanjali Shree and translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, an American translator. The difference of the winning novel is that it is the first book originally written in any Indian language to win the award and the first novel translated from Hindi to be recognised in the prize’s history.
The original Hindi book of it is ‘Ret Samadhi’ published in 2018, and the English translation was launched in 2021 by a Britain’s small publisher Tilted Axis Press - the publishing house was founded by translator Deborah Smith, who won the 2016 International Booker for translating Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian’ to publish books from Asia.
The story of the book
‘Tomb of Sand’ is set in northern India. It narrates the story of an 80-year old woman who experiences a deep depression after the death of her husband. Eventually, she overcomes the depression and decides to visit Pakistan to finally confront the past that she had left behind during partition - her past is filled with unresolved traumas of her experiences as a teenager during the Partition.
It is an urgent and immensely powerful critique of the destructive power of borders and boundaries of all kinds. The novel has also been recognised for its humour and wordplay even with its serious subject matter.
The original Hindi book consists of 739 pages.
About the author
The author of the book, Geetanjali Shree, was born on June 12,1957 in UP’s Mainpuri - now based in Delhi. She has authored three novels and several collections of short stories, many of which have been translated into French, English, Serbian, German and Korean.
Her 2000 novel, ‘Mai’, was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award 2001. She is a recipient of the Indu Sharma Katha Samman Award and has been a fellow of the Ministry of Culture, India and Japan Foundation. She believes that writing has its own reward, but getting recognition as special as Booker is a wonderful bonus.
2022 prize winner ceremony
The prize-giving for the winning author and translator took place on Thursday, May 26, at One Marylebone in London, and was hosted by BBC presenter, Nikki Bedi. The multi-platform ceremony included remarks from the judges, authors and translators, and beautifully performed readings from all of the titles on the shortlist. The awards were presented by the Chair of judges, translator Frank Wynne.
The five other novels which were chosen for the shortlist are: ‘Cursed Bunny’ by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur from Korean; ‘A New Name: Septology VI-VII’ by Jon Fosse, translated by Damion Searls from Norwegian; ‘Heaven’ by Mieko Kawakami, translated by Samuel Bett and David Boyd from Japanese; ‘Elena Knows’ by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle from Spanish; and ‘The Books of Jacob’ by Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Jennifer Croft from Polish.
Each of these shortlisted authors and translators received GBP 2,500, increased from GBP 1,000 in previous years – bringing the total value of the prize to GBP 80,000.
The panel of judges included: Frank Wynne; author and academic, Merve Emre; writer and lawyer, Petina Gappah; writer, comedian and TV, radio and podcast presenter, Viv Groskop; and translator and author Jeremy Tiang. The judges considered 135 books, with a record number of submissions received.
Author’s views
In her acceptance speech, author Geetanjali Shree said, she was “completely overwhelmed” with the “bolt from the blue” as she accepted her prize along with translator Daisy Rockwell.
“I never dreamt of the Booker, I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I’m amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled,” said Shree. “There is a melancholy satisfaction in the award going to it. ‘Ret Samadhi/Tomb of Sand’ is an elegy for the world we inhabit, a lasting energy that retains hope in the face of impending doom. The Booker will surely take it to many more people than it would have reached otherwise, that should do the book no harm,” she said.
Reflecting upon becoming the first work of fiction in Hindi to make the Booker cut, the 64-year-old author said it feels good to be the means of that happening. “But behind me and this book lies a rich and flourishing literary tradition in Hindi, and in other South Asian languages. World literature will be the richer for knowing some of the finest writers in these languages. The vocabulary of life will increase from such an interaction,” she said.
Daisy Rockwell, a painter, writer and translator of the book living in Vermont, US, joined Shree on stage to receive her award for translating the novel she described as a “love letter to the Hindi language”.
Comments of the judge panel chairman
In an online news conference, Frank Wynne, the Chair of the judges, highly appreciated the winning book. He said “Tomb of Sand” was “overwhelmingly” the judges’ choice, deserving to beat the five other shortlisted novels. Some of those books were by internationally well-known authors, including “The Books of Jacob” by Olga Tokarczuk, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist, and “Heaven,” by Mieko Kawakami, the Japanese author best known for “Breasts and Eggs.”
He called ‘Tomb of Sand’ an “extraordinarily exuberant and incredibly playful book,” even though it deals with such topics as bereavement and India’s partition from Pakistan. Wynne said it was “a novel of partition unlike any novel of partition I have ever read.”
“Ultimately, we were captivated by the power, the poignancy and the playfulness of ‘Tomb of Sand’, Geetanjali Shree’s polyphonic novel of identity and belonging, in Daisy Rockwell’s exuberant, coruscating translation,” added Frank Wynne.
“This is a luminous novel of India and partition, but one whose spellbinding brio and fierce compassion weaves youth and age, male and female, family and nation into a kaleidoscopic whole.”
The book includes some sections told from the perspective of inanimate objects, and much of the original novel depends on wordplay in Hindi.
Rockwell’s work on the book showed “the small miracle of translation,” Wynne said, borrowing a phrase from the Italian author Italo Calvino. However, the book claimed the title without receiving any review by any major British newspaper.
The judge panel Chair, Frank Wynne, went on to describe the book as: “Enormously engaging and charming and funny and light, despite the various subjects it’s dealing with … a perfectly decent beach read for absolutely everyone.”
Wynne was also of the view that Rockwell’s translation was “stunningly realised, the more so because so much of the original depends on wordplay, on the sounds and cadences of Hindi”.
He viewed that small independent publishers had done “enormous work in bringing translated work to people. There is still more to be done.
There is still a sense that publishing translations is difficult. It’s no more difficult than any other books.”
He said he hoped that ‘Tomb of Sand’s win would encourage more translations of books from non-European languages.
“Despite the fact that Britain has a very long relationship with the Indian subcontinent, very few books are translated from Indian languages, from Hindi, from Urdu, from Malayalam, from Bengali,” said Wynne. “I think that’s a pity and I think, in part, it happens because a subsection of Indian writers write in English, and perhaps we feel that we already have the Indian writers we need but unfortunately there are many, many Indian writers of whom we’re unaware simply because they have not been translated.”
However, the novel has not yet been published in the United States, but Wynne said he expected that to change with “a flurry of offers” after its Booker victory.
In Britain, “I would be gob smacked if it didn’t increase its sales by more than 1,000 percent in the next week,” Wynne said. “Possibly more.”
Possibly, the achievement of Geetanjali Shree may also encourage Sri Lankan English writing authors and translators, because International Booker Prize is one stage that they can showcase some of their great talents.