Three new books from the ‘Writer in Context’ series seek to enhance our understanding of translated literature

Each book is comprehensive, with samples of the writer’s fiction, fresh essays, reception by critics, readers’ letters and bio-chronology

In a telling scene, Krishna Sobti’s Mitro (from  Mitro be Damned, 1966), unhooks her blouse in front of her elder sister-in-law and placing her palms over her breasts, asks, “Speak the truth sister-in-law, does somebody else possess plump breasts like these?” This and a following few pages, where Mitro unabashedly talks about her physical cravings, shaped the discourse around the novel and its criticism by eminent writers like Amrita Pritam and Rajendra Yadav. 

What they missed were finer details of Mitro’s character — a prostitute’s daughter who exercises total autonomy over her body at a time when such boldness counted as dangerous defiance.

Critical studies often overlook nuances, especially when there is a lack of knowledge about the historical resonances, the socio-cultural atmosphere and political underpinnings related to the novel’s present. Readers who are not attached to the subcontinent in any way might find themselves more at a loss.

“We felt the need to prepare tools to access Indian writers and their texts from within their contexts,” say translator and scholar Sukrita Paul Kumar and Chandana Dutta, the joint editors of Routledge’s ‘Writer in Context’ series, which focuses on 12 landmark novels of  bhasha literature.

Of these, three are already out — one on Krishna Sobti (2021), edited by Sukrita Paul Kumar and Rekha Sethi; another on Joginder Paul (2021), edited By Chandana Dutta; and the latest on Indira Goswami (2022), edited by Namrata Pathak and Dibyajyoti Sarma. 

Other writers proposed for the series include Rahi Masoom Raza, Bama, Phanishwar Nath Renu, Amrita Pritam, Mahasweta Devi, V. Madgulkar, O.V. Vijayan and Devanuru Mahadeva. Such detailed and comprehensive studies giving a holistic picture of  bhasha writers in translation have been sporadic.  Doosra Jeevan by Girdhar Rathi or  Amrita Pritam: Her Poetry and Literature by Priya D. Wanjari are some of the few books that made an attempt. 

“We approached Routledge with two volumes in 2020,” says Dutta, ex-Assistant Director of Katha Vilasam. “Later, assured by the interest of the publisher, we decided to make it into a series by picking iconic writers from post-Independence Indian literature who are bracketed as ‘modern’ writers and their work popularly referred to as Modern Classics.”