The latest book to win the International Booker Prize is coming to the United States.
HarperVia announced it will publish Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, translated by Daisy Rockwell, in America next year.
Shree’s book, first published in English by U.K. indie press Tilted Axis last year, follows an 80-year-old woman who’s determined to change her life after a period of depression caused by the death of her husband.
It won an English PEN award, and last week was named the winner of the International Booker, becoming the first novel translated from Hindi to do so. International Booker chair of judges Frank Wynne praised it as “a luminous novel of India and partition, but one whose spellbinding brio and fierce compassion weaves youth and age, male and female, family and nation into a kaleidoscopic whole.”
HarperVia editor Gretchen Schmid said in a statement, “I was blown away by the book’s originality—a literary masterpiece unlike anything I have ever read before. Geetanjali Shree writes about death, grief, and trauma in a way that is meaningful and moving, but also playful and funny, and I’m in awe of the richness and exuberant wordplay of Daisy Rockwell’s translation.”
Tomb of Sand is slated for publication in the U.S. in the winter of 2023.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
