Author and Congress member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor says there have been many successful translations from Malayalam literature in the past few years.

It has been a great year for Malayalam literature in translation and author Shashi Tharoor, the Congress member of Parliament from Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, has every reason to back the remarkable run of newly-published Malayalam books available today at book stores across the country in English translations. Titles like Moustache by S Hareesh and translated by Jayashree Kalathil, which won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020, and KR Meera’s Assassin (original title Ghathakan) translated by J Devika this year, are bestsellers.  As a young boy, Tharoor, the author of BR Ambedkar: The Man Who Gave Hope to India’s Dispossessed and Shadows Across the Playing Field: 75 Years of India-Pakistan Cricket (with Shaharyar Khan), would watch in awe his uncles and cousins in Kerala reading translations of famous French writers Jean-Paul Satre and Albert Camus in Malayalam. Today, many of his own books in English have been translated into Malayalam and Tharoor is happy to pick up a translation of a new Malayalam novel because of the high quality of translation from the language. Tharoor, who hosted the curtain-raiser of the seventh edition of Kerala Literature Festival organised by DC Books in Kozhikode — named the City of Literature by the UNESCO Creative Cities Network last month — at his official residence in New Delhi this week, talks to Moneycontrol about what has changed for Malayalam literature to become hugely successful in translations today. Excerpts from an interview:

How would you describe the huge success and acclaim of Malayalam literature in translation today?

Translation generally speaking is doing well. In the last three years, there have been many successful translations from Malayalam. The English translations of M Mukundan’s Delhi (translated into English as Delhi: A Soliloquy by Fathima EV and Nandakumar K) and KTN Kotoor Ezhuthum Jeevithavum (The Man Who Learnt to Fly but Could Not Land translated by PJ Mathew) by TP Rajeevan, who passed away last year, all have come out in the last two years. All these original titles have been bestsellers in the Malayalam language.

Publishing in Kerala has seen translations from world literature, like Nobel Prize-winning Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez’s novels, into Malayalam for long. Today Malayalam novels are being translated into English for a global audience. What explains the change?

Yes, that is a new trend. The people in Kerala had the habit of reading world literature in the Malayalam language. I used to be surprised during my travels to Kerala from Mumbai in my childhood when I would see my uncles and cousins reading Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus in Malayalam. It was astonishing that these books had been translated from French to Malayalam and this has been going on from the 1960s. Now Malayalam books are being translated into other languages. Partially, it is a national trend. It is happening all over India in many Indian languages. The the quality of our books is very good because we have innovative and successful writers. Look at Bengali writers who are established classical writers. You see new writers today in Malayalam literature. There is a live and thriving literature that you are seeing coming out of Kerala that is getting translated today.

Malayalam writer KR Meera’s new book, Assassin (original Malayalam title Ghathakan), translated into English by J Devika, was published this year.

What about the quality of translations?

The quality of translations in Indian languages has improved dramatically. I still remember reading Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s famous 1956 novel, Chemmeen, in English as a young boy. It was such an excruciating experience because it read like a translation. This was a problem. You felt the clunkiness of the prose whereas you are reading something like what we are reading today in translations. The publishers are finding translators with better quality. The translators are themselves more comfortable in English than the earlier generation used to be. Everything has become better today and it is a more pleasurable read. I find that reading Malayalam novels, and I read English very much faster, in English today for me is a big blessing. It helps me sink into Malayalam literature because I don’t have much time for as a politician, by reading in very good and very readable translations.

How will the success in translations help Malayalam literature?

I think Malayalam writers are now getting better known across the country and around the world. When I was first publishing in French in 1991, I said to my French publisher, why do you only talk about translating books written in English by Indians. There is a whole literature out there in Indian languages that can go into French because there is a lot of similarities between the two peoples. The people of Kerala are very much like the French in terms of their intellectual inclinations and penchant for discussion on politics and philosophy and so on. I said, why don’t you look into these books in Indian languages. My French publisher said, fine, give us some books and where will we find the translators. I said if you can find people in Paris who will do it for you, people from Kerala who are living in France because Kerala diaspora is everywhere. I gather thereafter they were able to do it and publish a couple of good books from Malayalam literature in French.

Moustache by S Hareesh, translated by Jayashree Kalathil, won the JCB Prize for Literature in 2020.

The translations are also helping the storytelling reach a wider audience.

Absolutely. Malayalam literature is so sparkling and live today that there is much more material available for translation and publication. And multiple publishers are coming into the scene.

Get ₹100 cashback on checking your free Credit Score on Moneycontrol. Gain valuable financial insights in just two clicks! Click here