Finally, Hindi gets its due in nomination for the 2022 Booker Prize. The thirteen longlisted novels announced are works of fiction translated into English from eleven languages and originate from twelve countries across four continents – including Hindi for the first time.
For the 2022 Booker Prize, Geetanjali Shree’s translated Hindi Novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English by Daisy Rockwell (Tomb of Sand), will compete for the 50,000-pound prize split evenly between the author and translator.
The shortlisted six books from the Longlist get announced on April 7. The prize winner will be named on May 26 2022. “It is a great privilege to survey this year’s harvest in the company of such distinguished judges, who themselves write — in a rich range of traditions — about worlds real and imagined”, said Neil MacGregor, chair of the 2022 Booker Prize judges
Brief on the book: Tomb of Sand
In northern India, an 80-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband then resurfaces to gain a new lease of life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention confuses her bohemian daughter, who thinks herself the more ‘modern’ of the two. To her family’s consternation, Ma then insists on travelling to Pakistan, confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of partition. Geetanjali Shree is the author of three novels and several story collections, and her work has been translated into English, French, German, Serbian and Korean. Born in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, Tomb of Sand is the first book of Shree to get published in the UK. She has received and been shortlisted for several awards and fellowships and currently lives in New Delhi, vying for the biggest literary award of the year.
About the awards
The International Booker Prize is awarded annually for a single book, translated into English and published in the UK or Ireland. The Booker Prizes exist to reward the finest in fiction. The symmetrical relationship between the Booker Prize and the International Booker Prize ensures that the Booker honours fiction on a global basis: world-class fiction is highlighted by the prizes for English-speaking readers, whether that work was originally written in English (the Booker Prize) or translated into English (the International Booker Prize). The International Booker Prize began life in 2005 as the Man Booker International Prize.
