Geetanjali Shree Wins International Booker Prize For First Hindi-Language Work

Geetanjali Shree wins International Booker Prize for the Hindi-language book Tomb of Sand, making it the first book in any Indian language to win the prestigious acclamation. She won the prize yesterday at a ceremony in London. The book has been translated into the English language by Daisy Rockwell.

"Completely overwhelmed" by her win, the New Delhi based writer while accepting the prize said that it came as a "bolt from the blue." She was endowed with a prize and an amount of GBP 50,000 (approx Rs 49,00,000), which the author is going to share with the translator Rockwell.

The winning book is called Ret Samadhi in Hindi, which is located in north India and revolves around the life of an 80-year-old woman. According to the judges at the prize, it was a "joyous cacophony" and an "irresistible novel." In her acceptance speech, Geetanjali Shree said, "I never dreamt of the Booker, I never thought I could. What a huge recognition, I'm amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled."

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Geetanjali Shree Wins International Booker Prize

She also added, "There is a melancholy satisfaction in the award going to it. Ret Samadhi/ Tomb of Sand is an elegy for the world we inhabit, lasting energy that retains hope in the face of the 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."

The translator for the book Rockwell is a painter, writer and translator, who lives in Vermont, the US. She received an award for translating the book, which is described as a "love letter to the Hindi language."

The book won amongst five other books which were shortlisted from three different continents. It included previous winning authors like Olga Tokarczuk and Jennifer Croft. The languages included in the shortlist were Korean, Norwegian, Japanese, Spanish, Hindi and Polish.

The titles included were Cursed Bunny by Bora Chung (translated by Anton Hur from Korean), A New Name: Spetology 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 Pineiro (translated by Frances Riddle from Spanish), and The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk (translated by Jennifer Croft from Polish).