The poster girl from Dhanbad: Jinoy Jose P. reviews Sarah Joseph’s ‘Budhini’

History meets mystery in ‘Budhini’, in this vivid translation from the original Malayalam

Translation, said Günter Grass, is that which transforms everything so that nothing changes. While we encounter enough examples of the first part of the comment, rarely do we come across a translation that transforms the original in such a way that nothing changes. Most translations end up taking away the essence of the original, producing an emaciated clone. Sangeetha Sreenivasan’s translation of Budhini, the latest novel from Malayalam writer Sarah Joseph, is a happy exception. It is a translation that dutifully sticks to the original in its tone, tenor and texture, but is also able to stand on its own as a novel in English. Joseph is not an easy writer to translate. Her prose is complex, courtesy the curious variant of mid-Kerala Malayalam she employs in most of her works, especially in novels such as Aalahayude Penmakkal, Maattaathi and Othappu.