Indian writer Geetanjali Shri won the Booker International Prize for her novel Tomb of Sand. This was announced at a ceremony in London by the chairman of the jury, Irish translator Frank Wine.
This is the first book translated from Hindi to win this literary award.
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The work is based on the story of an 80-year-old woman who is experiencing the loss of her husband. She is faced with a misunderstanding of her daughter and goes to Pakistan, where she remembers the painful division of the country, but in the end she finds new sources of life.
“We were captivated by the power, poignancy and playfulness of The Grave of Sand, Geetanjali Shri’s polyphonic novel about self-awareness and belonging, in Daisy Rockwell’s colorful, iridescent translation,” commented Wine.
In total, the shortlist of the award included six authors, five of them were women. So, in addition to Shri, Poland’s Olga Tokarczuk (“The Book of Jacob”), Japanese Mieko Kawakami (“Heaven”), Argentinean Claudia Pinheiro (“Elena Knows”), South Korean writer Bora Chung (“The Cursed Rabbit”), and also Norwegian Jun Fosse with the book “Septology VI-VII”.
The International Booker Prize was created in 2005 as a complement to the Booker Prize. It is awarded for a literary work translated into English and published in the UK. The prize is £50,000, which is divided equally between the author and the translator.
In November 2021, South African writer Damon Galgut received the Booker Prize for Literature for The Promise.
Galgut’s novel is an epic saga about apartheid in South Africa. Events in the country are intertwined with the lives of several members of the same white family of farmers. The plot revolves around the will of the head of the family, who leaves the house and land to a black maid. Children do not agree with the last will of their father and are in no hurry to fulfill it.