English translation of Kashmiri writer Hari Krishna Kaul’s work to release on September 24
New Delhi, Sep 17 (PTI) The English translation of selected stories by noted modern Kashmiri writer Hari Krishna Kaul will hit the stands on September 24, announced publishing house HarperCollins India on Sunday.
“For Now, It Is Night”, translated from Kashmiri, is a collaborative project of four first-time translators Tanveer Ajsi, Gowhar Fazili, Gowhar Yaqoob and Kalpana Raina.
Kaul, who taught Hindi literature in various colleges of the University of Kashmir until he was forced to leave in 1990, started his literary career writing short stories in Urdu and Hindi. He switched to writing in Kashmiri in the mid-1960s.
His first collection of short stories in Kashmiri, “Pata Laraan Parbat”, was published in 1972. Three other collections of short stories and numerous television and radio plays followed, cementing his position as an important figure in the modern literary landscape of Kashmir. Kaul died in 2009.
“My uncle, Hari Krishna Kaul, was a major fiction writer and dramatist. Everyone of a certain age in Kashmir grew up with his iconic characters and memorable dialogues.
“It is profoundly gratifying to bring this selection of his works — which captures the entire trajectory of his fictional themes and narrative styles — to a wider audience through this unique collaboration,” said Raina in a statement.
In these stories, readers will find friends stuck forever in the same class at school while the world changes around them; travellers forced to seek shelter in a battered, windy hostel after a landslide; parents struggling to deal with displacement as they move away from Kashmir with their children, or loneliness as their children leave in search of better prospects.
According to the publisher, the translation is a work of four first-time translators — all native Kashmiri speakers — representing a diversity of gender, age, experiences, and religious identity, coming together to “work on the oeuvre of a canonical modern writer”.
“The quality of the stories was apparent from the earliest drafts, but over two years of collaborating, editing (and) revising have created a translation that truly does justice to the nuances and complexity and wit of the original. I’m really excited that such a substantial selection of Hari Krishna Kaul’s stories will now find a larger audience through this translation,” said Rahul Soni, associate Publisher, HarperCollins India.
Kaul’s only novel, “Vyath Vyatha”, was published in 2005. He was the recipient of several awards, including the Sahitya Akademi Award for Kashmiri fiction in 2000.
