Tomb of Sand - Geetanjali Shree

Winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize, Tomb of Sand tells the story of an 80 year old woman, so depressed following her husband's death that she literally turns her face to the wall ultimately resurfacing to a new lease on life in which she flies in the face of convention, becoming more modern than her bohemian daughter, and insists of traveling back to Pakistan "simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist." (Goodreads) The translator, Daisy Rockwell, says the novel was challenging to translate. "The narrative is experimental, fragmented and dreamlike, full of language tricks and invented words. It’s laced with references to Sanskrit classics, Bollywood movies, song lyrics, prayers and chants, and contemporary Hindi and Urdu novelists." (New York Times review by Alexandra Alter). Nevertheless Rockwell's translation won the prize.