A prolific translator, the Books Editor at Scroll.in, and professor of creative writing and literary journalism; Arunava Sinha is one of India’s most important literary figures.
In this episode of India Booked, Ayushi Mona and Sinha discuss Bengali literature and how he came to translation (part awareness, part accident, part design), the city of Calcutta (“The theatre of the vast drama of human life” as Sinha puts it) in the literary imagination of readers and writers both in Bengali and English, how the city’s literary, political, and sporting culture has directly or indirectly influenced so many of our writers, the "shrinking of our literary and artistic arcs" and much more. Tune in now!
The India Booked podcast uses literature as a lever to bring multiple facets of the country alive. It's perfect for not just bibliophiles and trivia junkies but also people interested in learning more about India. Each episode focuses on a different theme, ranging from business and food, to history and politics, geography and spirituality. It unfolds as a 40-45 minute conversation between the host and a celebrated author to talk about everything India.
Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English. Fifty-six of his translations have been published so far. Twice the winner of the Crossword translation award, for Sankar’s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen (2011), respectively, and the winner of the Muse India translation award (2013) for Buddhadeva Bose’s When The Time Is Right, he has also been shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction prize (2009) for his translation of Chowringhee and for the Global Literature in Libraries Initiative Translated YA Book Prize for his translation of Md Zafar Iqbal’s Rasha, and longlisted for the Best Translated Book award, USA, 2018 for his translation of Bhaskar Chakravarti’s Things That Happen and Other Poems. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK and the US in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation. He is an associate professor of practice in the Creative Writing department at Ashoka University. He was born and grew up in Kolkata, and lives and writes in New Delhi.
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