His last two books are for younger readers: Who’s There? (featuring illustrations by Anupama Ajinkya Apte) and Sumi Budhi and Sugi (featuring illustrations by Joanna Mendes).
His first novel for young readers, Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh (featuring illustrations by Krishna Bala Shenoi), was shortlisted for a Crossword Book Award and a Neev Book Award in the year 2019. His collection of short stories for adult readers, The Adivasi Will Not Dance, was shortlisted for The Hindu Prize 2016, was a #1 bestseller on Amazon India in 2017, and its translations have been published so far in 5 Indian languages. His first novel for adult readers, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, won a Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in 2015 and jointly won the Muse India Young Writer Award in 2016, was shortlisted for The Hindu Prize 2014 and a Crossword Book Award in 2015, and longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award 2016. His last novel for adult readers, My Father’s Garden, was shortlisted for the JCB Prize for Literature 2019 and won the Best Book prize at the Likho Awards for Excellence 2019 presented by the Humsafar Trust. Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar lives in Jharkhand and has written three books each for adults and children.
My Father’s Garden by Hansda Sowvendra Shekha
It establishes Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar as one of India’s most important contemporary writers. “The Adivasi Will Not Dance” is a mature, passionate, intensely political book of stories, made up of the very stuff of life. Troupe-master Mangal Murmu refuses to perform for the President of India and is beaten down Suren and Gita, a love-blind couple, wait with quiet desperation outside a neonatal ward, hoping-for different reasons-that their blue baby will turn pink Panmuni and Biren Soren move to Vadodara in the autumn of their lives, only to find that they must stop eating meat to be accepted as citizens Baso-jhi is the life of the village of Sarjomdih but, when people begin to die for no apparent reason, a ghastly accusation from her past comes back to haunt her and Talamai Kisku of the Santhal Pargana, migrating to West Bengal in search of work, must sleep with a policeman for fifty rupees and two cold bread pakoras. In this collection of stories, set in the fecund, mineral-rich hinterland and the ever-expanding, squalid towns of Jharkhand, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar breathes life into a set of characters who are as robustly flesh and blood as the soil from which they spring, where they live, and into which they must sometimes bleed.
0 kommentar(er)
