There is exciting news to share.
The Earthspinner is now out in two more languages, finding new readers in countries where English is not the first language. Translations make me very grateful -- such immense dedication from the publishers and especially the translator, in whose words an author's work finds new worlds. I've always wondered whether readers far away, unfamiliar with India, reading in a different language, read almost a different book from the one I've written. I'll never know. I read many books from other languages too and at a recent discussion on translation at the Oxbelly Writer's Retreat from which I am just back, a panel consisting of Fiammetta Rocco, Yukiko Duke, and Chigozie Obioma tackled precisely this question. Their response, and that of the audience, was unanimous: even when translations lose something of the original, they also gain a great deal too, and the book in the new language is a new entity.
In Romanian it is published by Humanitas and is translated by Cristina Nicolae. Humanitas has previously published translations of all my other books, except for Sleeping on Jupiter. Today in Cluj, Romania, there was a book discussion featuring the book. Unfortunately, I could only be there as a video recording. One of the organisers and speakers, Mihaela Gligor, a Romanian scholar specializing in Indian literature, sent the following report:
The book has also been published this week in German by From Luchterhand Verlag, which previously published All the Lives We Never Lived under the title Der Garten meiner Mutter. Both books are translated by Werner Löcher-Lawrence.
