Penguin Random House India (PRHI) has announced that the International Booker Prize-winning duo of author Geetanjali Shree and translator Daisy Rockwell of ‘Tomb of Sand’ will publish two new books in the next year.
The first book, "Our City That Year," will be released later this year, and "Once Elephants Lived Here" will be published in 2025 under Penguin's Hamish Hamilton imprint.
A new version of Shree's first novel, "Mai", translated by Nita Kumar, will be republished by June this year.
"It is wonderful to have three of my books coming out anew. 'Mai, my first novel, is special to me. It is the bedrock on which my writing grew. The stories in 'Once Elephants Lived Here' reflect diverse directions. It is so rejuvenating to get back to these books with a team that has worked so wonderfully before—Penguin, Tilted Axis, HarperVia, and, of course, Daisy and me.
"We are like a well-established musical gharana, which is solid in its basics and produces renderings of ragas that are ever richer in their fresh new renditions," Shree said in a statement.
Translated from the original "Hamara Shahar Us Baras" in Hindi, "Our City That Year" is a "churning and soul-searching novel" that takes readers on a poignant journey with a tale that unfolds against the backdrop of societal shifts and "speaks to our paranoid divisive times.”
"Translating 'Our City that Year' has been thrilling, terrifying, and challenging. It was wonderful to discover many of the seeds of Geetanjali's later experimentation, which we later saw in full bloom in 'Tomb of Sand'. It's been wonderful to collaborate with Geetanjali and Penguin India again on this timely and incisive project," Rockwell said.
"Once Elephants Lived Here" is the title story in a collection of short stories which offers a glimpse into the author's early exploration of themes that later manifested in the Booker-winning "Tomb of Sand."
In 2022, Shree became the first Indian author to win the International Booker Prize for her novel "Ret Samadhi," which was translated into English as "Tomb of Sand" by Rockwell.
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