Amitav Ghosh’s ‘Gun Island’ now in Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam

New Delhi, Nov 20 : Widening its reach, Jnanpith Award winner Amitav Ghosh’s masterful novel, “Gun Island”, which seamlessly brings together a man’s self-discovery, the fading folklore of the Sundarbans and the most pressing malaises of our times will now be available in its Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam translations, enabling writers to cross the linguistic barriers they were born into.
“It is a matter of the greatest pleasure and pride for me that ‘Gun Island’ is appearing in Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam. India is a richly multilingual country, where every language, including English, has absorbed a wide range of influences. Translations therefore play a very important role in Indian literary life,” Ghosh said.
“Through translations it sometimes happens that a writer can cross linguistic boundaries and become a homegrown writer in literary cultures other than those that they were born into. I was living in Kerala in 1983, when I started writing my first novel.
“I was delighted to discover then that many Keralans thought of Sarat Chandra as a writer who had written in Malayalam. I have since discovered that this is true also of many people who read Saratbabu in Hindi and Marathi. This is, I think, the greatest tribute that can be paid to a writer,” he added.
He also thanked the translators, Maneesha Taneja, Ashlesha Gore and K. T. Radhakrishnan “for the painstaking work they have put in”, saying the translations “are all of the highest quality”.
“Adeptly connecting a forgotten folktale of Bengal with present-day events whose reverberations can be felt across continents, this riveting tale is sure to appeal to a wide spectrum of readers, no matter which language they read it in,” Minakshi Thakur, Publisher, Eka, an imprint of Westland Publications, said.