Writer’s Side Author Daisy Rockwell Wins the International Booker Prize 2022

Tomb of Sand – Writer’s Side author Daisy Rockwell’s English translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Ret Samadhi – has won the International Booker Prize 2022. It marked a historic win as this is the first Hindi novel and the first from India and South Asia to ever win the award. 

Frank Wynne, the chair of the 2022 International Booker Prize jury, describes Tomb of Sand as “… a luminous novel of India and partition, but one whose spellbinding brio and fierce compassion weaves youth and age, male and female, family and nation into a kaleidoscopic whole.”

The critics weren’t frugal in praising Daisy’s translation either. “Much credit must go to Rockwell for keeping pace with a writer who said at last month’s Jaipur Literature Festival at the British Library: there are stories inside me, all around me, everywhere,” writes Sonia Faleiro in her review of the novel. 

Writer’s Side represents Daisy’s other award-winning books, including her translation of Krishna Sobti’s final novel, A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There (Penguin, 2019), the first South Asian book to be awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2020.