‘Tomb of Sand’ and translations, Dylan’s new book and more 

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. 

Welcome to this edition of The Hindu on Books Newsletter. 

As we wait for the International Booker Prize announcement on May 26 — Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell, is on the shortlist — we have a spotlight on translators in Literary Review, as also a review of the book. Today also happens to be Bob Dylan’s 81st birthday. The musician, artist and poet who is touring the U.S. with his pandemic album Rough and Rowdy Ways is also putting the final touches to a new book, out in November.  The Philosophy of Modern Song (Simon & Schuster) is the first book of new writing Dylan is doing since Chronicles, Volume One (published in 2004 and on the New York Times bestseller lists for over 50 weeks) and after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. According to the publisher, Dylan offers a master class on the art and craft of songwriting in his new book with over 60 essays on songs by other artists from Stephen Foster, Hank Williams, Nina Simone to Elvis Costello. “He analyses what he calls the trap of easy rhymes, breaks down how the addition of a single syllable can diminish a song, and even explains how bluegrass relates to heavy metal.” While they are reflections on music, they are also meditations on the human condition, like in many of his songs.

In reviews we read Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, Seema Chishti’s new book on her parents Sumitra and Anees, their ‘khichdi’ marriage and her mother’s cookbook in which mutton biryani hobnobs with sambar, a biography of Soli Sorabjee, and a special on 12 translators who are getting almost as much attention as authors.  

“A tale tells itself. It can be complete, but also incomplete, the way all tales are.” With these opening lines, Geetanjali Shree provides the key to her sprawling and powerful novel, Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell and shortlisted for the Booker International Prize. The story of the 80-year-old at its heart, Ma, is told from the perspective of various characters including humans, birds and crows, butterflies, even doors. In her review, Mini Kapoor writes that by the time the “shapeshifting” novel is over, all of human history, literature, art, thought, politics have been at the service of this tale that’s telling itself. “Ma has a 1947 storyline to pursue, and does so heroically, opening the trapdoors to her adolescent past. But her message is not just about Partition all that was left behind. In this epic account of her 81st year, her message holds good for every aspect of the lived life: ‘A border does not enclose, it opens out… A border is a horizon. Where two worlds meet. And embrace.’ It is a message that binds Ma’s past and present, and the future too of so many who’ve helped along her story.”

In Ma’s metaverse: Mini Kapoor reviews Geetanjali Shree’s ‘Tomb of Sand’, translated by Daisy Rockwell

Seema Chishti writes a moving story about her parents, Sumitra and Anees, and the possibilities they dreamed of in an India that belonged to everyone. Chishti’s book, Sumitra and Anees: Tales and Recipes from a Khichdi Family (HarperCollins), begins by celebrating the ‘khichdi’ of mixed marriages. Khichdi is that much loved dish made with a mixture of rice and dal and a part of all our lives, present in some form on every table, representing the richness and regional variations of Indian cuisine, says Rana Safvi in her review. Chishti writes that she was forced to lend words to a sacred marriage of two people bound by love and shared interests, though she knows that had her parents been alive, they would have baulked at this public display of personal details. Yet, whether it was the Emergency or the ‘tremors of the demolition of the Babri Masjid that changed India’, Anees and Sumitra, says Chishti, realised slowly that the hurdles they thought they had faced when they got together were simply ‘genteel objections’ compared to what the country was now experiencing. “With the diversity under attack, Chishti chose to share details of ‘not just an idea, but a lived reality’.”

Sumitra and Anees — Tales and Recipes from a Khichdi Family review: Love in the time of hate