In 2022, Tomb of Sand became the first work of Indian literature to win the International Booker Prize. Written in Hindi by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell, the novel is Shree’s magnum opus and the pinnacle of a distinguished literary career.
Indian writers have previously won the Booker Prize, which is restricted to works written in English: Salman Rushdie (1981), Arundhati Roy (1997), Kiran Desai (2006) and Aravind Adiga (2008). But English is spoken by about 10% of the Indian population; its rightful place as an Indian language is a result of the passionately contested legacy of 200 years of British rule on the subcontinent.
