Zac O' Yeah on two freshly translated thrillers from either side of the border — one by the king of Hindi crime fiction and the other by the king of Urdu detective stories.
If there are literary seasons, then I guess the current is one of the hottest in a long time. A thriller from the king of Hindi crime fiction, Surender Mohan Pathak, and a mystery from the king of Urdu detective stories, Ibn-e Safi, both freshly translated, arrived on my desk in one parcel tied together with a piece of string, almost like two handcuffed goondas.
Daylight Robbery
Surender Mohan Pathak, Translated by Sudarshan Purohit
Blaft, 2010,
pp 236, Rs 195
Daylight Robbery, with its attractive pulp cover by legendary Shelle Studio, is the second title by Pathak to be translated into crisp, hardboiled English by Sudarshan Purohit. Already last year I’d been bowled over by The 65 Lakh Heist and I am glad to hear that the series will continue with at least one more translation, the shortly forthcoming Fortune’s Ransom.
These three belong in the ‘Vimal Series’. The story goes that Pathak had written 40 novels about a crime-solving journalist called Sunil, a good guy, but needed a different hero to fit more sordid plot ideas. So he created Vimal, who was framed by his wife and her lover, put in jail on charges of embezzlement, and escaped to become a wanted criminal. The book flopped.
Full report here Deccan Herald
Showing posts with label Surender Mohan Pathak. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Surender Mohan Pathak. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Sweetness of Indian pulp
A few days after my first translation, The 65 Lakh Heist by Surender Mohan Pathak, was released, I walked into a large chain bookstore to see if it was stocked there. I found it in the 'Indian Fiction' bookshelf. Its two closest neighbours were an anthology of love stories edited by Ruskin Bond, and the newest book by Salman Rushdie.
I've been browsing through bookstores all my life, but it wasn't until then that it struck me just how unfair the categorisation was for all of the books displayed in the Indian Fiction category. The Ruskin Bond book should have been under Romance, or maybe under Anthologies. Rushdie's book should have been Literary Fiction. Many of the other books felt wrong, too — Tagore's and Premchand's translations should have been under Classics.
There should've been some sort of category created for Indian campus-lit and chick-lit by now, but those books sit next to historical thrillers and post-modern fiction on the same Indian Fiction bookshelf. The reader will, no doubt, point out that the volume of Indian books in all these genres is so low, that the books would be lost if mixed in with the other, non-Indian, books. And starting from that point, the reader — and several writers and reporters — have come to the conclusion that Indian writing is very limited and that readers here read much less than their counterparts in other countries. Although this makes for great copy, it's far from the truth.
Full report here DNA
I've been browsing through bookstores all my life, but it wasn't until then that it struck me just how unfair the categorisation was for all of the books displayed in the Indian Fiction category. The Ruskin Bond book should have been under Romance, or maybe under Anthologies. Rushdie's book should have been Literary Fiction. Many of the other books felt wrong, too — Tagore's and Premchand's translations should have been under Classics.
There should've been some sort of category created for Indian campus-lit and chick-lit by now, but those books sit next to historical thrillers and post-modern fiction on the same Indian Fiction bookshelf. The reader will, no doubt, point out that the volume of Indian books in all these genres is so low, that the books would be lost if mixed in with the other, non-Indian, books. And starting from that point, the reader — and several writers and reporters — have come to the conclusion that Indian writing is very limited and that readers here read much less than their counterparts in other countries. Although this makes for great copy, it's far from the truth.
Full report here DNA
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Natural-born thrillers
Surender Mohan Pathak is considered the master of suspense in Hindi. Thanks to Blaft and Sudarshan Purohit, the iconic Vimal series is now accessible to English readers
When Sudarshan Purohit read The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction he wondered if a similar exercise could be done for Hindi. Reacting to his blog post, one of the co-founders of Blaft, the Chennai-based publishing house, (www.blaft.com), Rakesh Khanna, asked if he would be interested in doing the translation. “And that's how I got into translation,” says Sudarshan.
The next step was deciding which books to translate. “The usual research resource, the Net, was not much help since Hindi pulp fiction is pretty much under the radar. However, I found an Orkut fan club dedicated to Surender Mohan Pathak.”
Sudarshan was sure he wanted to translate thrillers and in that genre, “Pathak was king. He inspires brand loyalty. His novels are real page-turners. The language is chaste Hindi, the plots are realistic and the writing is crisp and sharp. The novels feature serial characters, the two most popular being the investigative journalist, Sunil and the anti-hero Vimal.”
Full report here Hindu
When Sudarshan Purohit read The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction he wondered if a similar exercise could be done for Hindi. Reacting to his blog post, one of the co-founders of Blaft, the Chennai-based publishing house, (www.blaft.com), Rakesh Khanna, asked if he would be interested in doing the translation. “And that's how I got into translation,” says Sudarshan.
The next step was deciding which books to translate. “The usual research resource, the Net, was not much help since Hindi pulp fiction is pretty much under the radar. However, I found an Orkut fan club dedicated to Surender Mohan Pathak.”
Sudarshan was sure he wanted to translate thrillers and in that genre, “Pathak was king. He inspires brand loyalty. His novels are real page-turners. The language is chaste Hindi, the plots are realistic and the writing is crisp and sharp. The novels feature serial characters, the two most popular being the investigative journalist, Sunil and the anti-hero Vimal.”
Full report here Hindu
Monday, March 1, 2010
They did it
Very few crime novels have been written in English in India, but it is a relief to know that the genre has been thriving in other languages. Coincidentally, two publishers, Blaft and Random House India, have brought out two very different books — one by well known Urdu writer Ibn-e Safi, and the other by famous Hindi author Surender Mohan Pathak.
Translations are usually very tough — and it is remarkable how well Pathak’s novel Daylight Robbery reads in English. The pace is racy, the tone is just right. Pathak himself has said in a recent interview that he does not believe in long passages of description and, therefore, the book is a page-turner with tightly written action. The book succeeds because it quickly taps into our psyche, peopled as it is with characters we are familiar with from Indian cinema. Even the book cover luridly acknowledges it, with bare-bosomed babes, racing trucks and masked men. This is unadulterated literary kitsch heaven and one reads Pathak with a relaxed sense of fun. There is no struggle with graceful or elegant prose out here — rather, the testosterone directly injected into the writing throws us back to an era when we read James Hadley Chase in which, as they say, men were men and women were, well, women.
Full report here Indian Express
Translations are usually very tough — and it is remarkable how well Pathak’s novel Daylight Robbery reads in English. The pace is racy, the tone is just right. Pathak himself has said in a recent interview that he does not believe in long passages of description and, therefore, the book is a page-turner with tightly written action. The book succeeds because it quickly taps into our psyche, peopled as it is with characters we are familiar with from Indian cinema. Even the book cover luridly acknowledges it, with bare-bosomed babes, racing trucks and masked men. This is unadulterated literary kitsch heaven and one reads Pathak with a relaxed sense of fun. There is no struggle with graceful or elegant prose out here — rather, the testosterone directly injected into the writing throws us back to an era when we read James Hadley Chase in which, as they say, men were men and women were, well, women.
Full report here Indian Express
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