Author Geetanjali Shree’s Hindi novel ‘Tomb Of Sand’ has become the first book in any Indian language to win the prestigious International Booker Prize.
Her novel Tomb of Sand, a family saga set in the shadow of the partition of India, follows an 80-year-old woman after the death of her husband.
It was the first Hindi-language book to be shortlisted for the £50,000 prize.
“I never dreamt of the Booker, I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I’m amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled,” said Shree, in her acceptance speech.
“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,” she said.
Frank Wynne, the chair of judges, said the panel were “captivated by the power, the poignancy and the playfulness” of her novel.
“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,” he said.
He added that he had not read anything like it before, and its “exuberance” and “passion” make it a book “the world could do with right now.”
Geetanjali residing in New Delhi and born in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, in 1957, published Ret Samadhi in 2018. Geetanjali Pandey was her given name, but she adopted her mother’s surname Shree as her surname. She went on to study history at Lady Shree Ram College, followed by a master’s degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, after moving to Delhi for her higher studies. Geetanjali, a novelist and short-story writer, published her first story, Bel Patra, in 1987. She is the author of five novels and numerous short story collections. Gujarati, Urdu, English, French, Siberian, and Korean are among the languages into which her novels and stories have been translated. Ret Samadhi, her sixth novel, was published in 2018 and was translated into English by Daisy Rockwell and into French by Annie Montaut.
Shree’s novel was chosen from a shortlist of six books, the others being: ‘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.
The judges assessed 135 novels this year, and for the first time in 2022, all shortlisted authors and translators will each receive GBP 2,500, increased from GBP 1,000 in prior years, bringing the award total to GBP 80,000.
Complementing the Booker Prize for Fiction, the international prize is awarded every year for a single book that is translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland.