Jul 31

Jul 31 Tomb of Sand

Author: Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell
Publisher: Tilted Axis Press
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

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Note: This book is not yet published in the US. Click above to buy this book from my Blackwells, a bookstore in the UK that ships to the US for free (and isn’t affiliated with Amazon, unlike Book Depository and others).

Note: Content and trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

An eighty-year-old woman slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a hijra (trans) woman – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more 'modern' of the two.

At the older woman's insistence they travel back to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, a feminist.

Rather than respond to tragedy with seriousness, Geetanjali Shree's playful tone and exuberant wordplay results in a book that is engaging, funny, and utterly original, at the same time as being an urgent and timely protest against the destructive impact of borders and boundaries, whether between religions, countries, or genders.

TL;DR Review

Tomb of Sand, translated to English from the Hindi, is a masterpiece of both storytelling and translation. I’ve simply never read anything like it.

For you if: You love language, are OK with feeling unmoored while reading, and aren’t afraid of a challenge that’s very much worth it.

Full Review

“Once you’ve got women and a border, a story can write itself. Even women on their own are enough. Women are stories in themselves, full of stirrings and whisperings that float on the wind, that bend with each blade of grass.”

Whew, where to start with this one? While Tomb of Sand isn’t going to be quite right for every reader, there’s simply no denying that it’s a masterpiece of both storytelling and — as for Daisy Rockwell’s English from the Hindi — translation. It’s also unlike anything I’ve ever read before, which was both exciting and challenging. I’m so glad it won the International Booker Prize, prompting so many of my friends to read it and recommend it to me over and over.

Told in three parts, the book is about the matriarch of a family in India and her daughter. In part 1, Ma grieves the death of her husband and won’t get out of bed. In part 2, she moves in with Beti and deepens her friendship with a hijra (trans) woman named Rosie. In part 3, Ma and Beti travel abroad and we come to realize just how much about her we did not know.

As I said, this book challenges the reader — at least, it will challenge Western readers (which I think is a very good thing, tbh). It asks us for patience and trust, looping and playing and experimenting and waxing and taking every shape but a linear one. The narrator’s voice reminds me of a capering jester, and reading it feels like you’re flying on the wind that moves around, above, and between everyone and everything. The wordplay is joyful and begs you to admire the care Rockwell took with this translation. There were, admittedly, parts where I zoned out a bit, allowing myself to just be carried along — but honestly, I think that also felt like kind of the point.

This book is for those who love language for language’s sake, and for those who are interested in exploring themes like borders (physical, imagined, cultural, of the self), family structure, nature, and joy itself. (It won’t be for those who prefer things to be relatively straightforward, or feel uncomfortable when unmoored, or prefer a book carried by plot.)

I was moved, provoked, impressed. And so very glad I read this one.