Literature in Translation

I've read a lot of modern Indian literature over the last few years. It's come in many genres, including magic realism, satire, realistic fiction, and every blend you can think of. Some was written by Indian writers abroad. Some was written by Indian writers in India.

Without exception, every South Asian novel I've ever read - not only Indian, but also Pakistani, Sri Lankan, or Bangladeshi - was originally published in English. I've never read any modern South Asian literature in translation.

That might not seem very significant. After all, South Asia got English bequeathed to it by colonialism. And India is a country where one recent prime minister gave Hindi-language speeches that were written out for him fo-neh-ti-ka-lee because he couldn't read or understand Hindi. More often than not, when Indians from different parts of the country meet, they speak English. Why shouldn't most Indian literature be written in English?

Because, in most areas of the country at least, English isn't the language of the masses. It's true that there are more Indians than Americans who can speak English well enough to have an intelligent conversation, but it's also true that if you subtract the population of the USA from the population of India, you get over seven hundred million.

And even Indians who can speak enough English to easily communicate with someone with no other language in common, may not have enough of a native speaker's sense of the language to write fluently in it.

In other words, every work of fiction I've ever read that originated in India came from the country's English-speaking elite, who have the linguistic talent to write beautifully in English. Of course, there is nothing unusual about a country's well-known authors being gleaned from the most well-educated strata of society.

But what are we English readers missing out on?

Books are everywhere in India. While traveling in Karnataka and Kerala (and Kerala, by the way, with a population more than half that of the UK, has a literacy rate of nearly 100% -- lots of readers there), I saw books all the time. I saw books being sold in roadside stalls. I saw bookshops in the cities. I can't make heads or tails of Kannada or Malayalam, the local languages. What were most of those books about? Fiction or nonfiction? I don't know.

Are books written in Indian languages translated into English? Are their authors known abroad? I don't know.

I can't help feeling that we foreigners are missing out on something.

...and I'm back in the States

For trip details and photos written by me, see Bundaegi. For trip details and photos by Jenna, see LaoRenCha.

Big trip

On Saturday we leave on our jaunt from Taipei to Singapore to India (Karnataka and Kerala) to Egypt (Cairo and Luxor) to the USA and back to Taipei (on February 25). For the first time in my life I will have crossed every line of longitude.

In preparation for my first trip to India I have read up the remaining pieces of Indian fiction on our bookshelves. An Obedient Father by Akhil Sharma, the story of a corrupt low-level official in Delhi, is a difficult and often disgusting book to read. I've read short fiction with disgustingly unlikeable protagonists, but An Obedient Father is the first full-length novel I've read with such a unpleasant first-person narrator. Sharma makes it readable by making you feel pity for the main character, even though you'll never like him.

Like Rohinton Mistry and Manil Suri, Sharma's fiction depicts Indian society warts and all - particularly the warts. That's good for me. Helps me be prepared for what I'm likely to see. I've been to developing countries (Indonesia and the Philippines), but I've never seen the sort of large-scale poverty I've heard I should be prepared for.

Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala won the Booker Prize in 1975. It's about a British woman who comes to India to learn the story of a relative of hers who eloped with a local ruler back in the 1920s. Jhabvala married into Indian society rather than being born into it, so she can look at India with a knowledgable foreigner's eye.

In Beautiful Disguises by Rajeev Balasubraman is the story of a girl from a small town in Karnataka who travels to The City (never named, but I assume it's Mumbai) to seek her fame and fortune. I enjoyed this book quite a bit. The main character (whose name we never learn) is immensely likeable. Balasubraman felt the need to invent a cartoony female antagonist who seems an amalgam of every Disney villainess, from Snow White's Evil Stepmother to Cruella de Vil. At first this annoyed me a bit, but then I figured it fit the book's dreamy, we're-all-characters-in-the-movies tone.

As for the actual logistics of getting around India, I'm leaving that to Rough Guide and Jenna's knowledge of the place. Should be fun.