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India

Red sparks and flames on a black background
Photo by Ben Moreland on Unsplash
Progeny
By La. Sa. Ramamirtham
An unexpected narrator tells the story of a rift between a mother and son in this excerpt from a novel by the renowned Tamil author La. Sa. Ramamirtham.
Translated from Tamil by Subhashree Beeman
Multimedia
Five vultures standing on bare tree branches
Photo by Casey Allen on Unsplash
Of Some Unidentified Village, Nayantara Barua
By Avinash Shrestha
What curse come to roost in a barren house / These nightmares like the screech of falcons.
Translated from Nepali by Rohan Chhetri
Multimedia
A large, shallow river with pines on the opposite bank and mountains in the distance
Nameri National Park. Photo by Debuapriyo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms
By Yeshe Dorje Thongchi
Bamboo had been an intimate part of his life since his birth, but he had never known bamboo to produce seeds.
Translated from Assamese by Aruni Kashyap
The twelve books featured in the list, in three rows of five
12 Translators Recommend Women in Translation
By Words Without Borders
For Women in Translation Month, a dozen translators recommend recent favorite books written and translated by women.
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist: Offshore Lightning, The Country of Too, No One...
The Watchlist: July 2023
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends new and forthcoming books translated from Arabic, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish.
Stray dogs
Photo by Heshan Weeramanthri on Unsplash
Parliament of Dogs
By Nasera Sharma
Seeing their community divided into two camps, some dogs developed a strange arrogance.
Translated from Hindi by Akshaj Awasthi
Multimedia
Black, gray, and white storm clouds
Photo by Harshit Sharma on Unsplash
A Second of Stillness
By Jintu Gitarth
Under a boundless sky stretching across the horizon, enveloped in a silence spanning miles, Diganta sat beside his favorite person.
Translated from Assamese by Harsita Hiya
Multilingual
Cobwebs outside of a house
Photo by Pierre Bamin on Unsplash
Morning Procession
By Amit Dutta
Everybody knew that reading strange books was Shaam’s only hobby.
Translated from Hindi by Vaibhav Sharma
Empty train tracks disappearing into the horizon in a dry landscape
Photo by Robert Linder on Unsplash
The Kettledrum
By Siddique Alam
In the forest, between the acacia, mulberry, and stinging nettle bushes, where snakes shed their skin, she searched for Mangru’s footprints.
Translated from Urdu by Musharraf Ali Farooqi
A boat on the coast of Gujarat at sunset
Photo by Pandav Tank on Unsplash
Translating Gujarat: On Raising Visibility and Sharing Literary Wealth
By Jenny Bhatt
For translators from under-represented languages like ours, the act of translation can also be a mode of recovery and reclamation.
Portrait of Dr. Sachin Ketkar
Into English: Sachin Ketkar on Bilingual Translation
By Jenny Bhatt
Translation is an extension of my preoccupations as a creative writer.
Multimedia
A colored floral illustration on paper
Detail of “Leopard Bearing Lion's Order to Fellow Judges", Folio 51 recto from a Kalila wa Dimna. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Alice and Nasli Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Alice Heeramaneck, 1981
All It Seems
By Befaam
Even grief now becomes / a kind of delight, or so it seems.
Translated from Gujarati by Meena Desai
Multilingual
Portrait of Dr. Tridip Suhrud
On Gandhi, Translation, and the Gujarati Intellectual Tradition
By Jenny Bhatt
Gandhi was a very close reader of languages and literatures.
An old ornate mansion in India with a green wrought iron gate
Photo by Vikram Nath Chouhan 🇮🇳 on Unsplash
Once Elephants Lived Here: Part 2
By Geetanjali Shree
The city murmured in the mazes of her ancient face.
Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Two blue glass skyscrapers seen from below against a cloudy blue sky
Photo by Shubham Sharma on Unsplash
Once Elephants Lived Here: Part 1
By Geetanjali Shree
Here, all things old have been suppressed.
Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
A pair of black leather lace-up boots in front of a white wall
Photo by Rico Van de Voorde on Unsplash
Boots
By Nilutpal Baruah
People said Bedo Bora was a foot fetishist. He was fascinated by women’s feet, they said. When you met him he stared at your feet.  
Translated from Assamese by Rashmi Baruah
Multimedia
A man paddles a canoe in a river at sunset
Photo by Inu Etc on Unsplash
Roots
By Madhurima Barua
The stench of country liquor assaults her. Her husband is tottering.
Translated from Assamese by Syeda Shaheen Jeenat Suhailey
MultimediaMultilingual
A wagtail perching on a stick by a body of water
Photo by Nikita Nikitenko on Unsplash
A Wagtail’s Song
By Bikash Dihingia
How was it possible that there was another me buried within? And how could someone else feel his presence even before I could?
Translated from Assamese by Harsita Hiya
Multilingual
The covers of the books featured in the list
The Best Books of 2022—And What We’re Looking Forward to in 2023
By Words Without Borders
Our staff, contributors, and board members share their favorite translated books of the year and the titles they're looking forward to in 2023.
Jenny Bhatt (left) and Rita Kothari (right)
On the Evolution and Craft of Gujarati Literature in Translation
By Jenny Bhatt
We do not see translations of books that will unsettle the reading community, and provoke them to be different than who they want to be.
A game of hopscotch on asphalt
FranHogan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via WikiMedia Commons
Writing in Mother Tongue and an Other Tongue
By Pratishtha Pandya
Every time I write something in English, I’ve been left feeling guilty, as if I had betrayed someone.
The covers of the ten books featured in the gift guide
Your 2022 Holiday Gift Guide to Reading in Translation
By Isabella Corletto
Ten recent books in translation that the readers in your life are sure to enjoy this holiday season.
Tree of life carving at the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque
Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ahmedabad
By Bharat Trivedi
Those days of leaping carefree into the Sabarmati / Are long gone
Translated from Gujarati by Mira Desai
Photo of a man walking alongside his bike on a tree-lined path
Photo by Akshat Vats on Unsplash
To Loved Ones
By Jayesh Jeevibahen Solanki
The bazaar reveals this to us: / I sell / Get sold / Someone buys me / and I buy someone else
Translated from Gujarati by Gopika Jadeja
A woman in a pink sari walks in the street in front of an apartment building
Photo by Akshar Dave on Unsplash
Writing in Troubled Times
By Geetanjali Shree
Fiction came to us from the West. Creativity did not.
Photo of a school framed by two trees
Snehrashmi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Crossroad
By Varsha Adalja
“Shame on you, boys. Dullards. A girl has outdone you all.”
Translated from Gujarati by Jenny Bhatt
Multimedia
The covers of all the books featured in the list
12 Global Children’s Books for History Lovers
By Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
In celebration of #WorldKidLitMonth, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp recommends 12 international books for young readers with an interest in world history.
Sketch of Infernal Landscape by Hieronymus Bosch
Rik Klein Gotink and Robert G. Erdmann, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Seeking Shelter in Language
By Saudamini Deo
In English, Hindi, and Bangla—the languages I use daily—we spoke only of death and distress.
Ellamma Is Distressed
By Gogu Shyamala
They may even throw us out of this village.
Translated from Telugu by P. Pavana
Portrait of writer and translator Nisha Susan
“Women with Highly Irregular Minds”
By Suhasini Patni
In all these years that I’ve spent writing in English, I’ve always felt that my leaning toward literariness was informed by Malayalam.
“The Joy of Cultural Mixing”: Daljit Nagra on Retelling the Classic Ramayana in Punglish
By Samantha Schnee
Humor was essential for my Ramayana.
An International Menagerie: Animal Stories
By Susan Harris
Some of the animals here possess the power of speech, deploying it to often subversive ends.
Portrait of Meena Kandasamy
Image Copyright © Varun Vasudevan
The Poetry of Radical Female Fighters
By Suhasini Patni
When you are not held back by any fear, you can write songs of liberation.
Double portrait of writer Jhumpa Lahiri
Where I Find Myself
By Jhumpa Lahiri
I have come to think of any “definitive text” largely the same way that I think of a mother tongue, at least in my case: an inherently debatable, perpetually relative concept.
Why Must Two Works be Compared at All?
By Saudamini Deo
Why must two works be compared at all?
Celebrating Kazi Nazrul Islam, Rebel Poet of Bengal
By Liesl Schwabe
Much of the radical heart of Nazrul’s larger oeuvre, including his work as a freedom fighter, has been overlooked.
10 Translated Books from India to Read Now
By Arunava Sinha
Both list-makers and editors seem to forget that India is in fact a country with 20,000 tongues, which are variations of over 120 distinct languages.
On the “Good” in “Good Traveler”
By Shahnaz Habib
Travel is a self-improvement project that has been sold to us as a world-improvement project.
Road Stories: International Writing on Travel
By Susan Harris
Some of the writers here document their own trips, while others invent characters and send them on the road.
Across Mountains and Valleys: Stories of Migration from the Kinnaur and Spiti Valleys
By Arshia Sattar
Despite their specificity, these tales transcend the places that produced them and throb with a universal appeal.
The Story of Sunni and Bhunku
By Himalayan Oral Tradition
Why, oh why, did you not come back immediately?
Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer
The Girl Who Turned into a Crocodile
By Himalayan Oral Tradition
She struggled and fought back and tried to save herself but could not overcome the great crocodile that had taken hold of her.
Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer
When the Deer Moved Away
By Himalayan Oral Tradition
Deeku refused to understand the close bond between the humans and the deer and their dependence on each other.
Translated from Lahouli by Noor Zaheer
Beyond “Untouchability”: Dalit Literature in Hindi
By Laura Brueck & Christi A. Merrill
Dalit literature represents some of the most meaningful, socially engaged narrative voices in India today.
Our Village
By Mohan Das Namishray
It would be difficult to find a single man whose back had not been scarred by the whip of the thakur or his agents.
Translated from Hindi by Laura Brueck & Christi A. Merrill
Gujji
By Suraj Badtiya
Although his name wasn’t Gujji to begin with, he was Gujji now.
Translated from Hindi by John Vater
The Case of the Quota Candidate
By Anita Bharti
We are here to teach, not to meddle in the affairs of other people.”
Translated from Hindi by Swarnim Khare
from “Doubly Cursed”
By Kausalya Baisantry
There were a few people in our basti who couldn’t bear our improved circumstances.
Translated from Hindi by Christi A. Merrill
Fragmentation
By Ajay Navaria
“There must be a misunderstanding.
Translated from Hindi by Laura Brueck
A metal bowl against a white background
Khalili Collections / CC-BY-SA 3.0 IGO, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO, via Wikimedia Commons
“Chhanna,” the Metal Bowl
By Amarjit Chandan
Contemplating a family heirloom, a ruminative Amarjit Chandan finds the past staring back at him.
Translated from Punjabi by Sarabjeet Garcha
Mustard Flowers
By Ajmer Rode
Morning starts / when lights turn green.
Translated from Punjabi by the author
While I Slept
By Navtej Bharati
I will not accept this old age / grafted slyly on my body.
Translated from Punjabi by the author
Standing on Ashes: Three Punjabi Poets on Aging
By Sonnet Mondal
Punjabi poetry stands on ashes, reinforced by a blend of spirituality and dissent.
Devdas
By Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay
She searched for an answer, embarrassed for the first time in her life at having to say what she was about to.
Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha
The House of Wax
By Subodh Ghosh
“Have you been able to forget me?”
Translated from Bengali by Somrita Ganguly
Heeng Kochuri
By Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay
I cannot serve a glass of water to a Brahmin’s son.
Translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha
Shaheb Bibi Golam
By Bimal Mitra
It was late. Who knew where Bhootnath could buy liquor at this hour?
Translated from Bengali by Somrita Ganguly
Recalculating the Hexagon: The New French Literature
By Susan Harris
These writers have migrated geographically and, in some cases, linguistically.
The Man with a Guava Tree
By Shumona Sinha
“Why? Wasn’t there a guava tree at the other guy’s place?”
Translated from French by Roland Glasser
I Will Die Young
By Rasul Mīr
Are they more beautiful than me?
Translated from Kashmiri by Sonam Kachru