ALTA45 Panel: Six Characters in Search of a Funder
2022 saw the first South Asian language novel win the International Booker: Tomb of Sand, Daisy Rockwell’s translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Hindi novel. Of the top 15 world languages, five are South Asian. Yet South Asian literature in translation barely exists in US publishing. Of the 7573 translations published over the past decade, only 64—less than 1%—originated from a S. Asian language. In 2015, a few of us came together to make South Asian lit in translation more visible. Along the way we accrued other milestones, forged connections and, hopefully, made SA lit in translation shine a little brighter. What did it take to get here? Does this one win change much for the space our languages occupy in US publishing? What does it take to exist in a landscape where we are almost invisible?