A New Voice

The English translation of Jana Aranya,The Middlemen,was released about a year back and has been doing a brisk business across the country and indeed Kolkata. “It’s almost as if today’s generation has rediscovered Sankar,” beams Ashok Burman of the Family Bookshop. The english translation of Sankar’s other celebrated work Chowringhee has found him admirers around the world. It was the toast of the London Book Fair last year and has been nominated for the prestigious Independent Fiction Award too.

Translation of Bengali novels into English is nothing new. Translated works of Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray have been steady sellers in most bookshops around the country but it’s only of late that the focus has shifted to other greats of Bengali literature like Sankar,Parashuram and of course Sunil Gangopadhyay. “These books are contemporary and manage to strike a chord with those who aren’t comfortable with Bengali,” says Bishwarup of The Oxford Bookstore.

Moreover,the translations of these Bengali classics,specially those of Chowringhee and Jana Aranya are sophisticated attempts unlike the earlier slipshod ones which don’t manage to convey the complexities of a literary work. In The Middlemen translator Arunava Sinha manages to recreate Sankars crisp,unornamented prose without compromising on the depth of Sankar’s vision. “Indeed,superior translation means that these books will find more readers. And publishers are taking enough care to ensure that,” says Burman.