There's Gunpowder in the Air

"This is another incredibly powerful novel. It’s written with almost no decoration: it’s a fast and extremely economic novel about a man and his attempt to escape from jail. It’s set in the time when Manoranjan himself was in jail in 1970s Kolkata. At that time, West Bengal—of which Kolkata is the capital—was gripped by revolutionary uprisings led by a movement of students, farmers and industrial workers known as the Naxals. In the early 1970s, there was a large-scale crackdown against the Naxals by the then prime minister, Indira Gandhi. Hundreds were killed in military operations, and thousands jailed. Yes. He was poor and illiterate, and he joined the Naxals because they had been nice to him. They had saved his life. And he ended up in jail. This book describes a character rather like himself who ends up in jail in Calcutta in the 1970s. It’s a story full of suspense: it’s about the planning and execution of a jail-break. But along the way, it describes the entire universe of the jail: not only the prisoners, but also the people who are guarding them—who are also, of course, very low down in the social hierarchy, and in many ways hardly more privileged than the prisoners themselves. This is a powerful, angry, yet beautiful novel. It’s about terrifying desperation, but also relationships and hope. Yes. He’s a very, very funny individual, and the novel is full of hilarious insights. It’s very sardonic. Manoranjan declares that he writes out of anger. He declares that his books should be considered as weapons against the great inequality and injustice of Indian society. There is a kind of force to them—a smoldering, angry force. But he is himself hilarious. He takes for granted that the way that Indian society is organized is so unjust that it’s just something we can only ultimately laugh about. He talks about nearly everything, nearly every institution, as self-evidently illegitimate. It’s this perspective which makes his work so original. Some readers might find his assumption that the institutions of commerce or the law deserve so little respect surprising or shocking. But when you read the experiences of the characters in his novels, it seems like the only just conclusion. It’s easier to think of India as like Europe, rather than as like an individual European country. When we think of ‘Indian literature,’ it has the range and scale of ‘European literature.’ And if we are to make ‘Indian literature’ a reality, translation is fundamental. Without translation, there is no such thing as Indian literature, because no reader could ever approach it or see it. The old socialist government, like many similar socialist governments, treated literature as a very high calling, and put a lot of effort into translation. So you had many truly national literary stars. Writers like Premchand (who wrote in Hindi), Mahasweta Devi (who wrote in Bengali), or Qurratulain Hyder (who wrote in Urdu) were well known across the country. Translation has not done so well in recent decades. But it’s making a come-back now because the English-language publishers are fully aware that English is not necessarily the most exciting literary language in India today. If they want to reflect the range and quality of contemporary Indian writing, they really have to go into some of the other literatures. With the prize, we’re trying to help this revival of translation. We are committed to the idea of ‘Indian literature,’ and that means multilingual literature: literature written in 22 official languages, plus English. So translation is key. Encouraging more translations of better quality is very important, and next year we’re launching a whole new translation initiative, which will focus on improving the status of translation as a career."