Making History With Tomb Of Sand, Booker Shortlist 2022: Daisy Rockwell, Translator

In early 2022, a novel written by an Indian author-academician and translated by an American scholar made history. Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell from the Hindi novel, Ret Samadhi, by Geetanjali Shree made it to the Booker Longlist 2022. How did this selection make history? It’s the first Hindi language work of fiction to be selected for the prestigious literary award, ever. In April 2022, we received further good news when Tomb of Sand made it to the Booker Shortlist!

Team Her Circle connected with both Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell, not only because they’ve made history, but especially since these scholars also prove that collaborations among women in every field can turn up beautiful results. Rockwell, in a conversation with us, shared just how excited both of them are since making it to the Booker Longlist, and then the Shortlist, since it has clearly increased the global audiences’ engagement with the book.

Rockwell also described the journey of the translation. As a translator who has mostly dealt with very aged writers’ works, or those of writers who have passed away, Rockwell had never before translated the work of a living author. The prospect of working with Shree brought up many challenges, but it had its benefits because the collaboration was mutual. She explains that no matter what the challenges, the duo always managed to come out on top of it together, and ultimately their partnership worked really well.

Another feature of Rockwell’s conversation with Her Circle was the transformation she has been through as a reader and translator in recent years. She explained how she decided to change her literary diet after realising “how accustomed we all are, both men and women, to the male gaze and the male perspective on life.” She cut off male authors from her own literary diet, tried to read only women authors, and further discovered that “it’s not that the female perspective is better, It’s just that it’s very different, in that male writers often just leave out women’s perspectives. That’s always true of a dominant group.”

So, Rockwell suggests, every human being should try to change their literary diet by including more women’s voices in it, and cutting off male voices—at least for a while to appreciate the difference it can make. To know more about Rockwell, watch the full interview.