Tomb of Sand
Geetanjali Shree · 2022
An 80-year-old Indian woman loses herself after her husband's death, then finds herself again in ways that encompass partition, gender, and liberation. Shree's novel is formally wild, mixing registers, tones, and languages. It became the first Hindi novel to win the International Booker Prize; a long-overdue recognition.
The case against
Seven hundred pages, and the story Ma actually needs to tell waits until the final stretch; before that come narrating crows, chattering objects, and wordplay that Daisy Rockwell's translation works visibly hard to keep airborne. Exuberance is the method, and exuberance at this length becomes a tax. The Booker rewarded the ambition; your patience covers the bill.
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