Kashmiri literature exists in something of a vacuum at present. Correction. It existed in a vacuum for the longest time, till translations by, among others, Neerja Mattoo, Ranjana Kaul, Trilokinath Raina, Ranjit Hoskote, and Shafi Shauq introduced non-Kashmiri readers to the fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from the region. This year, a new collection of short stories, For Now, It Is Night, has enriched the canon of Kashmiri literature.
The book brings together short stories written between 1970 and 2000 by the prominent Kashmiri author and playwright Hari Krishna Kaul. It also contains a few previously translated stories that have appeared in various Kashmiri short stories collections edited and translated by Neerja Mattoo such as Kath: Stories from Kashmir (2011), The Greatest Kashmiri Stories Ever Told (2022), and In This Metropolis (2011) translated by Ranjana Kaul and published by Sahitya Akademi.
Rediscovering Hari Krishna Kaul
Unlike most collections featuring multiple translators, where each story is translated by only one of the translators, this collection is a collaborative effort. Each story has been discovered with painstaking effort, restored, audio-recorded, and discussed at length by the translators – the outcome of which is clearly visible in the masterful translations by the team comprising Kalpana Raina, Tanveer Ajsi, Gowhar Fazili, and Gowhar Yaqoob.
Kalpana Raina is Hari…
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