SaRB #09: Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell on ‘Our City That Year’

Geetanjali Shree’s Our City That Year, translated by Daisy Rockwell (Penguin India, August 2024), is a tale of a city under siege, reflecting a society that lies fractured along fault lines of faith and ideology. First published in 1998, Our City That Year is loosely based on the communal riots and violence in the lead-up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and its aftermath of rising uncertainty and dread. Twenty-six years after its original Hindi publication, the book’s call to bear witness to India under the grips of religious nationalism is timelier than ever, speaking to the growing communal divisions in India and across the Subcontinent. Geetanjali Shree is the winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize, and of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation, for her novel, Tomb of Sand (Ret Samadhi in the Hindi original). The novel was also shortlisted for the Emile Guimet Prize. She has written four other novels, Mai (Mai: Silently Mother), Hamara Shahar Us Baras (Our City That Year), Tirohit (The Roof Beneath Their Feet), and Khali Jagah (Empty Space), and five collections of short stories. She writes essays and gives talks in both Hindi and English. Her work is translated into many Indian and foreign languages. Geetanjali has also worked on theatre scripts in collaboration with a Delhi based group, Vivadi, of which she is a founding member. Daisy Rockwell is a painter and award-winning translator of Hindi and Urdu literature, living in Vermont. She has published numerous translations from Hindi and Urdu, including Ashk’s Falling Walls (2015), Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas (2016), and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Krishna Sobti’s final novel, A Gujarat here, a Gujarat there (Penguin, 2019) was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2019. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (Tilted Axis Press, 2021; HarperVia, 2022) won the 2022 International Booker Prize and the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.