New Delhi: Tomb of Sand, Daisy Rockwell’s English translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Hindi novel Ret Samadhi, has won the International Booker Award 2022.
We are delighted to announce that the winner of the #2022InternationalBooker Prize is ‘Tomb of Sand’ by Geetanjali Shree, translated from Hindi to English by @shreedaisy and published by @tiltedaxispress@Terribleman @JeremyTiang @mervatim @VascoDaGappah @VivGroskop pic.twitter.com/TqUTew0Aem
— The Booker Prizes (@TheBookerPrizes) May 26, 2022
“I never dreamt of the Booker, I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I’m amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled,” Shree said in her acceptance speech.
“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 continued.
The International Booker Prize comes with 50,000 pounds, to be split equally between the author and translator.
Tomb of Sand follows the story of one family – particularly the women in it, with a focus on an octogenarian woman whose husband has just passed away – and its relationship with each other, history and Partition.
“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,” Frank Wynne, chair of the judges, said.
You can read an excerpt from Tomb of Sand here and a review here.
