Tomb of Sand

An eighty-year-old woman turns her back on the household after her husband's death, then gets up and begins a life nobody had planned for her. Geetanjali Shree's novel won the International Booker Prize in Daisy Rockwell's translation. Shree lets the narration wander: objects speak, digressions take over, and the language plays constantly, all of which Rockwell carries into English with unusual inventiveness. The story moves from family rooms in northern India towards the border with Pakistan, and questions of partition, memory and who gets to decide an older woman's life run through it. The book asks for patience and repays it. Where the interest lies: • Awarded the International Booker Prize in English translation • Translated from Hindi by Daisy Rockwell • Experimental narration with shifting voices and digression • Themes of partition, ageing, family and borders For readers of literary fiction, followers of translated writing and book clubs willing to take on something formally adventurous, offered by Boipoka.