Anita Gopalan gets US honour

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 29

Translator and artist Anita Gopalan has been awarded the 2016 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for her translation into English of “Simsim” by Hindi author Geet Chaturvedi.

Anita, who is based in Bengaluru, is the second Indian translator to be selected and Geet Chaturvedi’s novella only the second Indian work of fiction. Renowned literary organisation ‘PEN America’ will honour her at their 2017 literary awards ceremony in New York in February.

Anita is a graduate from BITS, Pilani, and worked in the banking technology sector for many years. Her translations have appeared in several international journals.

“Simsim” is an elliptically told tale of an old man’s memory of love, a young man’s imagined love, Sindhi migration, a cast-off library and the fight against a ruthless land mafia against the backdrop of the ‘old traditional’ India and a ‘new corporate’ India.