Geetanjali Shree Wins the International Booker Prize, 2022

Hello Gentle,
 
Geetanjali Shree has won this year’s International Booker Prize for her critically acclaimed monumental novel: “Tomb of Sand.” Geetanjali Shree becomes the fourth women to win the award since its revised inception in 2016, while this award marks the first time a novel written in Hindi to receive the award.
 
Previous winners include (from 2016 on)

2016 – Han Kang – “The Vegetarian,”

2017 – David Grossman – “A Horse Walks into a Bar,”

2018 – Olga Tokarczuk – “Flights,”

2019 – Jokha Alharthi – “Celestial Bodies,”

2020 – Marieke Lucas Rijneveld – “Discomfort of Evening,”

2021 – David Diop – “At Night All Blood is Black,”

“Tomb of Sand,” was described by the judges as being an extraordinary novel that was a pleasure to read in part due to its humour. Frank Wynne, chair of judges for this year’s award, went to so far as to call the book: “Enormously engaging and charming and funny and light, despite the various subjects it’s dealing with . . . a perfectly decent beach read for absolutely everyone.”
 
“Tomb of Sand,” is a mammoth novel that recalls an 80-year-old woman, who slips into a deep depression when her husband dies, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. She travels to Pakistan to confront the traumas she endured as a adolescent during Partition, and re-evaluates the multifaceted complexities and perspectives of her identity of being a mother, a daughter, a woman, and a feminist herself. Where these themes would be considered severe and must be treated with the airs of sacrilege of seriousness, Geetanjali Shree imbued the narrative with graceful humour, charm, and a lush exuberance of wordplay with the original Hindi, which must have been difficult to translate, in order to provide an authenticate inclination of the original cadence. “Tomb of Sand,” has been hallmarked as a revolutionary novel, one which protests the needless borders, boundaries, and alienating attitudes that are facilitated by geographical disputes, political ideology, social status and rank, religious convictions, or on the basis of gender.
 
This year’s longlist was considered particularly strong with many great writers also shortlisted for the award, which included Olga Tokarczuk and Jon Fosse, with powerful and engaging new voices who are beginning to secure their own foothold in translation. At the start of the award, however, “Tomb of Sand,” was considered one of novels to watch and an immediate contender once it was originally longlisted.
 
Despite being described as a slow-burning novel initially, once momentum is picked up, “Tomb of Sand,” becomes a dazzling and engaging novel, full of humour and humanistic visions.
 
Congratulations to Geetanjali Shree, and to Daisy Rockwell (Translator), whose ability to gracefully capture, transition, and translate the novel into another language must have been a challenge, but well worth the effort.
 
 
Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
 
M. Mary