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?

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Moderator

Jason Grunebaum has translated the work of Manzoor Ahtesham and Uday Prakash, among others. He has received an NEA Translation Fellowship, a PEN/Heim Translation Grant, and the GHI Translation Award. His work has been shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and longlisted for the National Translation award. He teaches Hindi and literary translation at the University of Chicago.

Panelists

Arunava Sinha has published sixty-eight translations so far, winning three awards in India. His translation of Taslima Nasreen’s novel Shameless was a finalist for the 2021 National Translation Awards, and his translation of Bhaskar Chakravarti’s Things That Happen and Other Poems was longlisted for the Best Translated Book Award 2018: Poetry. He teaches at Ashoka University, India. Daisy Rockwell is a painter and translator. Her numerous published translations from Hindi and Urdu include novels by Upendranath Ashk, Bhisham Sahni, and Khadija Mastur. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand won the 2022 International Booker Award, and her translation of Krishna Sobti’s final novel, A Gujarat here, a Gujarat there won the 2019 Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize. Shabnam Nadiya is a Bangladeshi writer and translator. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of a Steinbeck Fellowship (2019); a PEN/Heim Translation Grant (2020); and the 2019 Himal Southasian Short Story Prize. Her translations include Moinul Ahsan Saber’s novel  The Mercenary (Seagull Books), and Leesa Gazi’s debut novel Hellfire (Westland 2020). Mahmud Rahman is a writer and translator resident in the Bay Area. He has translated Bangladeshi writers Mahmudul Haque, Shaheen Akhtar, Ahmad Mostofa Kamal, and Afsan Chowdhury. His translation of Bangladeshi writer Mahmudul Haque’s Partition novel Black Ice was published in 2012 by HarperCollins India.