Memory’s Daughter:

With the publication of Krishna Sobti's celebrated work in English translation, Katha has made available to English readers vibrant and faithful translations of one of Hindi's most affecting authors — perpetually modern, inspiring and delightfully unpredictable in her medium. This artistically produced translation is welcome.

 —The Hindu

Krishna Sobti's women are simple, yet defiant and unremorseful — qualities rare for the 1950s and the 60s. A must read book for literature buffs.

—Harmony Magazine

Dissonance and other stories:

Dissonance and other stories (Katha, Rs 250) by Jayakanthan collects some of the shorter masterpieces of the acclaimed genius of 20th century Tamil literature. Jayakanthan was the great stylist of Tamil, just as Saadat Hasan Manto was responsible for fashioning out of Urdu a strikingly modern idiom. Both the writers were also united in their shared interest in the low life, their disdain for the veneer of respectability surrounding the urban middle class, and in their taste for the macabre and the bizarrely erotic. K.S. Subramanian’s translation brings out the bristling irreverence of Jayakanthan’s prose, the pithy sentences, laconic, episodic sequences appear taut, full of suspense and secrecy. There are moments of sheer brilliance, as in the ironic reversal in “Cover”, where young Gopalan’s raging hormones dissolve into the pity of things as he rushes off to cover a madwoman, standing stark naked on the road. 

—The Telegraph, Calcutta

Dark Afternoons:

An uncomfortable novella. Thought-provoking would be a mild word for it.

—Enakshi Chatterjee

Dance:

Mukundan’s novella Dance throbs with meanings. Straddling through divergent worlds, merging of antithetical cultures, gaining and dissolution of identities and a diminishing world are concepts that flit through the slim volume.

—The Hindu

The translation reads better than the original.

—M Mukundan

The narrative is smooth and the translation flawless – you wouldn’t have known it was a translation if it was not mentioned on the cover flap.

—The Sunday Tribune

Tohellwithyou Mitro:

Krishna Sobti’s Mitro is no less than a gripping Bollywood film – with all masala elements to lure the reader. A book that celebrates “desire” of a woman, it’s a tribute to the femme fatale, giving her full freedom to transgress social boundaries. Sobti’s choice of characters is certainly unique - she’s picked them up from a raw rural setting. The setting is so Hindustani that an Indian reader finds no choice but relate with every aspect of it.

— Sahara Times

If you can enjoy a classic in the original, what’s the point of reading its translation? Ironically, and unfortunately, Krishna Sobti’s path-breaking work Mitro Marjani—written in our so-called national language—won’t be as easily available in bookstores across the country as its translation in the international language. Moreover, there is a category of readers who are familiar with Hindi but prefer English because it’s fashionable and convenient to do so.

Whatever may be their reasons for reading this book, most people are not going to regret (or forget) it. The story of Mitro, a free-spirited girl married into a middle-class Hindu family of traders, is outrageous even today, over four decades after it first ruffled many a conservative feather.

It’s easier to describe the protagonist than to define her. She has a wicked sense of humour, a shrewd brain, a voluptuous body and an apparently insatiable libido. She feels no shame in showing off her breasts to her chaste Jethani or mocking her husband’s sexual incompetence. Nothing’s sacred or scary for this courtesan’s daughter, who is more than a match for any man. Though not really cut out for connubial life, she decides not to become a social outsider like her unwed mother.

Mitro’s mystique is well summed up by her mother-in-law Dhanvanti: "No one can fathom this girl. When she’s good, she’s better than the best. When she’s bad, she’s worse than the worst." The vampish bahus of soap operas are nothing but inferior versions of this hell-raiser, who is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating characters in Indian literature.

Sobti’s crisp and sharp language loses some of its punch in English. For instance, "Wah re kamzat billay, malai dekh moonh marne aaya hai!" becomes merely "You alley cat come drooling after the cream!" Still, plenty of lines are provocative enough to make an impact even in angrezi.

The translators have playfully preferred to retain quite a few words, such as "Jethani", "Devrani", "Samdhin", "Jamai" and "Bhaujai" (It’s amusing to hear Mitro ask her mother, "Why ri, why?"). However, conspicuous by its absence is a glossary, which would have been of help particularly to foreign readers.

This novella is the perfect introduction to Sobti’s rich oeuvre, which includes Daar Se Bichhudi and Sahitya Akademi award-winning novel Zindaginama. Go for the original, if you can. Otherwise, this handsomely produced translation-cum-tribute is the next best thing.

—The Sunday Tribune

Sunflowers of the Dark:

Sunflowers of the Dark (Surajmukhi Andhere Ke) is the story of Ratti, whose spirit is tortured by demons from her childhood. In this story, as in others, the author shows herself ahead of her times, handling themes that her generation preferred to ignore. Only recently has the official machinery of justice been forced to focus on a victim’s trauma and its long drawn aftermath. Even artists, particularly filmmakers, began to talk of the needs and desires of a woman not too long ago.

What stands in the way of Ratti’s fulfilment? Is it her fate, a cruel society, or her parents’ inability to help her heal?

All these perhaps, but most of all, Ratti’s own refusal (the word ‘stubborn’ comes up often in the story) to compromise with anything less than the truth renders her utterly lonely, yet unable to accept companionship.
In a world still largely male-oriented, those who write of a woman’s search for complete fulfilment are in danger of becoming cynics, or aggressive, or just plain clinical. But in Sobti’s Sunflowers…, one finds the unflinching presentation of reality suffused with compassion, and devoid of judgmental hostility.

The success of a creative work is partly the resonances it creates in the mind of one who peruses it. Here, the language is simple, the story simply strung together. It is not a novel with numerous threads coming together at remote points in time, hundreds of pages away from where they took off. Within just a hundred pages, the author acquaints us with Ratti’s tortuous journey, her fighting spirit that refuses to kneel though it weeps, a spirit that does not allow her to dissimulate for the sake of assuaging the ego of her male friends. Yet its reflections are many.

And in this fine translation, Pamela Manasi does a difficult job aesthetically and subtly. By bringing out an English translation of yet another of Krishna Sobti’s works, Katha has performed a service to readers and fans of this doyenne among Hindi authors.

—The Hindu

Ratnika, living in urban Shimla, battles the stigma of sexual abuse throughout her childhood. Even though she faces persecution and constant bullying at school, yet she fights tooth and nail to keep her self intact. Unfazed by and dismissive of social ostracism, she fights to conquer demons that torment her psyche without taking refuge in sentimental self-pity. She emerges as a plucky woman who subverts the deep-rooted stigmas against a rape victim. She suffers, but fights back with a vengeance. The unsavoury experience propels her on a journey—from loss of desire to a rediscovery of her body. She goes through a string of relationships trying to find true desire and exploring her sexuality. Her search is not for ideal love but ideal desire. In fact, surprisingly, ideal love here is completely debunked for ideal desire.   Katha books are well known for providing good with the best of Indian translation and this book is no different. The translation appears to do justice to the original piece in terms innovative use of language. The tone of the book is minimalist and there is deft use of language to portray upheaval and turmoil in the protagonist’s development. However, at certain junctures, the author leaps over time and space which lead to ambiguity and confusion to some degree. But, eventually, the author manages to control the rhythm and pace with dexterity.

Overall, it makes for thought-provoking reading in a single sitting. The author is not so ambitious as to make a social statement, or a scathing attack on the violence of sexual abuse. It merely explores a fresh perspective on the evil of rape and the prejudices (largely social) associated with it.

—The Tribune