Monday, July 04, 2011

On UR Ananthamurthy's Bharathipura

My review of the Kannada novelist UR Ananthamurthy's novel Bharathipura, published earlier this year in a translation by Susheela Punitha, appeared last weekend in the Wall Street Journal, and can be read here.

You'll forgive the appearance of some contextual details that you probably already know; I put them in for with the paper's audience in mind. I'll post a longer version of this essay, with some excerpts from the novel and a more detailed attention to Ananthamurthy's style, very soon.

Last week I linked to Ananthamurthy's very useful essay, "What Does Translation Mean In India?" which deals not so much with the question of how translators work, as with that of how Indian novelists (and by implication, all novelists who work up material from multilingual contexts) are themselves translators.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have great respect for Dr.U.R.AnanthaMuthry.The point where I disagree and don't understand him is his expectation of Brahmins to be reformed and becoming progressive overnight. Socity moves forward when all the people starts becoming progessive and not a particular sect or caste. There are 2 ways of achieving . One is thru education and other thru legislation and both has failed in India. Progressive and left leaning people harp on Secularism without knowing its basic meaning. First of all they have to accept the Universal meaning of Secularism which means Separation of Govt. and the Religion and this should be taught at the school from 1st Grade on wards to see any result.