Dawdling, waddling and often going off at a tangent along a google of asides, the narrator engages the reader with the everyday mundaneness of unimportant details which are important in the concatenation of life's events. It is striking that it is on and around a tomb that serious philosophical discussion and reflection are held. The world to the author is much more than mankind, it is the universe, physical, ethereal, inanimate beings, butterflies, flowers, plants, birds, doors, hills, sky, The Tomb of Sand is a phantasmagoria, tales of our passionate lives.
One of the best reviews I have heard of this Book. I have read the Novel in Hindi (Mind boggling) and the English translation does a fairly good job! Especially the Last part of the book cannot be enjoyed to its fullest if one is not exposed to Indian Partition Literature ( a genre on its own) and Indian Classical Music. In a literature festival recently, when someone asked her about the name of the book, she said, I had decided that it will be Reth Samadhi, but I had to discuss it with my mentor Krishna Sobati ( to whom this book is dedicated to). Krishna Sobati heard the title and said Reth ( Sand) keeps flying High in the wind with her right hand lifted up and with the other hand pushing downwards, said Samadhi ( tomb) keeps burying into unknown depths and at this Point Shree noticed that Mrs Krishna looked like a dervish! This Sufiness was the essence of this novel and hence she took it as a YES! :)
Thank you so much! I definitely felt like I was missing quite a few allusions/references, especially in the third part, but I'm glad to know that if one was more familiar with Partition literature, it would be even more effective. Thanks for sharing the story about the title! That's amazing!
This book is like 350-400 in original hindi version. But in translation it became almost 750! Great video. Can you please make videos about 'midnights children' and ' Moors last sigh' by Salman Rushdie?
Another wonderful review! I also bought the book from the publisher and it's sitting on my shelf, and have been wanting to get to it, but I am mid-way through reading another Indian novel set in the aftermath of partition (A Suitable Boy - twice as long as Tomb of Sand!) and would like to finish it first. I am loving A Suitable Boy, which as one might suspect from an over 1400pp novel is sprawling and has tons of characters - it manages to be intimate and daily with characters bantering with family members over everyday things, while also having long digressions on politics - especially land rights for tenant farmers. Like a mix between the peace parts of War and Peace, some of Levin's dirgressions in Anna Karenina, and also sometimes reminds me fondly of parts of The Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone. Must push on so I can get to Tomb of Sand, which seems to come at things from a different but also very interesting angle!
Thank you, Erin! I've heard many great things about A Suitable Boy, but it's really intimidating. Haha. You've made it sound really great though...perhaps I'll keep an eye out for a used copy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I think the time has come for non-Indians to begin to pronounce Indian names more accurately -- to make the effort to find out how a native would pronounce them. For instance, it is GeetAnjali (accent on the second syllable), not GeetanjAli. It's MahAbhArata, not MahabharAta.
Thanks so much for your well considered, in-depth and thoughtful look at the novel. A real treat to listen to you discuss it as a I had a bad night's sleep so I'm not feeling very productive at the moment. 😅 Your knowledge of mythological texts and "maximalist" literature really helped me better understand the form the book works within. And your assertion about how the text challenges our conception of borders and mythologizes Partition feels exactly right. I loved the crows' commentary as well. I frequently enjoy novels that self-consciously toy with storytelling and word play so I enjoyed so much of this epic even though I know I probably missed a lot of the references. If I had a spare month or two I could imagine pleasurably delving into the Mahabharata before returning to Tomb of Sand to better get the connections. Never enough time. 🙂
Thanks, Eric! I can only imagine how many intertextual references I missed as well, so you're definitely not alone on that front! It would be really interesting to get a "critical edition" of this book sometime in the future. Hopefully now that it has won the International Booker, more people will write about it. I hope you're able to get a better night's sleep tonight!
Eric, if I may suggest, there's a great podcast on the Mahabharata epic, about 12/15 minutes each episode, by Arti Dhand. The stories are related humorously, engagingly, but with all the nuances intact..I am of course fascinated by this epic & have read extensively on it since there are some really in-depth analyses in Bengali.
Love the reading about historians v. storytellers. This is a book that immediately decided I wouldnt read because of its length, but now I'll have to rethink. That is the second time that has happened today.
Hah! It is *pretty* long, but it reads quite fast. While the subject matter is heavy at times, the prose is light, fun, and funny, so it really never feels like you're reading one of those dense "big books."
Wonderful review Sean! For me, knowing this was about a revitalized old Indian lady was the incentive to buy and read it but, as you’ve shown, it’s so much more than that. I like what you said about the white spaces being intentional- they almost give you time to pause and think about what you’ve just read, also the idea that Geetanjali Shree is interested more in stories than history and that the storyteller is an excavator. I think if you went into this for plot you may well be disappointed but it is enjoyable in so many other ways- the word play, the asides and digressions, the character of Ma and what it says about borders and partition. I’m hoping to reread this at the end of the year and I’ll have your review in mind when I do.
Thank you, Jo! I wonder how intentional the physical layout of the Tilted Axis edition was - as you said, it seems like it thematically fits the book. I think all of the emptiness on the pages also reinforce all that was lost because of the Partition. Completely agree concerning plot. There is a wonderful plot, but it doesn't drive the book in a way that a lot of people expect. I really like books that aren't plot-driven, but I can see some readers being frustrated by it. Tomb of Sand is definitely a book that I would like to revisit in the future as well! Thanks for watching!
Wonderful discussion. Really appreciated the extracts you read out. A lot of respect for the translator for bringing out the wordplay from Hindi to English. Unrelated: I finally finished Books of Jacob today! I found it reads like non-fiction all the way through (this happened, then this, etc etc) which is why I had such a hard time with it. I don't read Polish but one gets a sense of what a massive accomplishment translating this text was as well.
Thank you! Yes, the translation is wonderful - I can only imagine the linguistic games in the original! Good to hear about Books of Jacob. I, unfortunately, put it down at about the half way mark, though I do want to get back to it. Agreed that that book and it's translation is an immense accomplishment though, even if I didn't really enjoy it. Good on you for finishing it!!
@@travelthroughstories I, like you, didn't 'like' Books of Jacob and am mostly relieved to finish it. I did like her novel 'Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead' (which I read in between) a lot even though the astrology parts were a bit too much for me. How is your Terra Nostra read going? I started it and the book has such a powerful opening but I was completely defeated within the first hundred pages. 'Leaf by Leaf' suggested me to try shorter fiction by Fuente first (like I did with Tokarczuk), I might actually do that.
@@Paromita_M It's going well, I think! I had a late start, so I'm still playing catch up. I think I'm on page 150 at the moment. It's dense and I'm definitely missing a lot, but so far, I'm really enjoying it. A few people in the group have read The Death of Artemio Cruz and have said that that was an "easier" read, so perhaps that's a good place to start?
appreciate hearing your thoughts on tomb of sand! so interesting to hear how you loved the first third of the novel, i personally preferred the last third lol. my favorite scene was when shree brought to life partition era authors. it was inspiring.
The final third of the novel is so so good! Reading through the second part, I wasn't sure how everything was going to come together, but it really did. Ma's speech was incredible. Thanks for watching! I really enjoyed your review a few weeks back as well.
It's so difficult to start bigger books, but once you get going, there's no better feeling (in my opinion). Tomb of Sand reads quite quickly, in my experience.
An excellent collection of contemporary short stories which also concern Partition is "An Unrestored Woman" by Shobha Rao. Also, one of my favourite novels of recent years is "The Parcel" by Anoshi Irani which deals with very difficult subject matter in a powerful way.
General: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga Partition Literature: Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh, Ice-Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa and my favourites - Short Stories by Sadat Hassan Manto and Pinjar (meaning cage) by Amrita Pritam translated into English as The Skeleton by Khushwant Singh. There are also excellent Hindi films (imo) on Partition all available on TH-cam with English subtitles - 1) 'Garam Hawa' 2) '1947:Earth' (based on Ice-Candy Man) 3) 'Pinjar' (based on novel of the same name) 4) 'Hey Ram'. All are disturbing and painful due to the content but massive trigger warnings in particular for 4).
Excellent review, I dont read most of the indian-english writers coz they are mostly upper caste. Geetha's award was not celebrated in india much coz of her political views.
Dawdling, waddling and often going off at a tangent along a google of asides, the narrator engages the reader with the everyday mundaneness of unimportant details which are important in the concatenation of life's events. It is striking that it is on and around a tomb that serious philosophical discussion and reflection are held. The world to the author is much more than mankind, it is the universe, physical, ethereal, inanimate beings, butterflies, flowers, plants, birds, doors, hills, sky, The Tomb of Sand is a phantasmagoria, tales of our passionate lives.
Well put!
One of the best reviews I have heard of this Book. I have read the Novel in Hindi (Mind boggling) and the English translation does a fairly good job! Especially the Last part of the book cannot be enjoyed to its fullest if one is not exposed to Indian Partition Literature ( a genre on its own) and Indian Classical Music. In a literature festival recently, when someone asked her about the name of the book, she said, I had decided that it will be Reth Samadhi, but I had to discuss it with my mentor Krishna Sobati ( to whom this book is dedicated to). Krishna Sobati heard the title and said Reth ( Sand) keeps flying High in the wind with her right hand lifted up and with the other hand pushing downwards, said Samadhi ( tomb) keeps burying into unknown depths and at this Point Shree noticed that Mrs Krishna looked like a dervish! This Sufiness was the essence of this novel and hence she took it as a YES! :)
Thank you so much! I definitely felt like I was missing quite a few allusions/references, especially in the third part, but I'm glad to know that if one was more familiar with Partition literature, it would be even more effective. Thanks for sharing the story about the title! That's amazing!
I love big books and I cannot lie…..brilliant review Sean, especially placing the book in its mythological context.
This book is like 350-400 in original hindi version. But in translation it became almost 750!
Great video. Can you please make videos about 'midnights children' and ' Moors last sigh' by Salman Rushdie?
Another wonderful review! I also bought the book from the publisher and it's sitting on my shelf, and have been wanting to get to it, but I am mid-way through reading another Indian novel set in the aftermath of partition (A Suitable Boy - twice as long as Tomb of Sand!) and would like to finish it first. I am loving A Suitable Boy, which as one might suspect from an over 1400pp novel is sprawling and has tons of characters - it manages to be intimate and daily with characters bantering with family members over everyday things, while also having long digressions on politics - especially land rights for tenant farmers. Like a mix between the peace parts of War and Peace, some of Levin's dirgressions in Anna Karenina, and also sometimes reminds me fondly of parts of The Dream of the Red Chamber/Story of the Stone. Must push on so I can get to Tomb of Sand, which seems to come at things from a different but also very interesting angle!
Thank you, Erin! I've heard many great things about A Suitable Boy, but it's really intimidating. Haha. You've made it sound really great though...perhaps I'll keep an eye out for a used copy. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I think the time has come for non-Indians to begin to pronounce Indian names more accurately -- to make the effort to find out how a native would pronounce them. For instance, it is GeetAnjali (accent on the second syllable), not GeetanjAli. It's MahAbhArata, not MahabharAta.
Thanks so much for your well considered, in-depth and thoughtful look at the novel. A real treat to listen to you discuss it as a I had a bad night's sleep so I'm not feeling very productive at the moment. 😅 Your knowledge of mythological texts and "maximalist" literature really helped me better understand the form the book works within. And your assertion about how the text challenges our conception of borders and mythologizes Partition feels exactly right. I loved the crows' commentary as well. I frequently enjoy novels that self-consciously toy with storytelling and word play so I enjoyed so much of this epic even though I know I probably missed a lot of the references. If I had a spare month or two I could imagine pleasurably delving into the Mahabharata before returning to Tomb of Sand to better get the connections. Never enough time. 🙂
Thanks, Eric! I can only imagine how many intertextual references I missed as well, so you're definitely not alone on that front! It would be really interesting to get a "critical edition" of this book sometime in the future. Hopefully now that it has won the International Booker, more people will write about it. I hope you're able to get a better night's sleep tonight!
Eric, if I may suggest, there's a great podcast on the Mahabharata epic, about 12/15 minutes each episode, by Arti Dhand. The stories are related humorously, engagingly, but with all the nuances intact..I am of course fascinated by this epic & have read extensively on it since there are some really in-depth analyses in Bengali.
@@TheGoldenflower58 That's great, thank you! I'll look it up.
What an excellent, well thought out review! This was a pleasure to watch :)
Thanks so much!
Just now received my copy can't wait to read your review is very helpful and inspiring to read this.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! Thanks for watching.
Love the reading about historians v. storytellers.
This is a book that immediately decided I wouldnt read because of its length, but now I'll have to rethink. That is the second time that has happened today.
Hah! It is *pretty* long, but it reads quite fast. While the subject matter is heavy at times, the prose is light, fun, and funny, so it really never feels like you're reading one of those dense "big books."
well done. you are a learned man
Wonderful review Sean! For me, knowing this was about a revitalized old Indian lady was the incentive to buy and read it but, as you’ve shown, it’s so much more than that. I like what you said about the white spaces being intentional- they almost give you time to pause and think about what you’ve just read, also the idea that Geetanjali Shree is interested more in stories than history and that the storyteller is an excavator. I think if you went into this for plot you may well be disappointed but it is enjoyable in so many other ways- the word play, the asides and digressions, the character of Ma and what it says about borders and partition. I’m hoping to reread this at the end of the year and I’ll have your review in mind when I do.
Thank you, Jo! I wonder how intentional the physical layout of the Tilted Axis edition was - as you said, it seems like it thematically fits the book. I think all of the emptiness on the pages also reinforce all that was lost because of the Partition. Completely agree concerning plot. There is a wonderful plot, but it doesn't drive the book in a way that a lot of people expect. I really like books that aren't plot-driven, but I can see some readers being frustrated by it. Tomb of Sand is definitely a book that I would like to revisit in the future as well! Thanks for watching!
Wonderful discussion. Really appreciated the extracts you read out.
A lot of respect for the translator for bringing out the wordplay from Hindi to English.
Unrelated: I finally finished Books of Jacob today!
I found it reads like non-fiction all the way through (this happened, then this, etc etc) which is why I had such a hard time with it. I don't read Polish but one gets a sense of what a massive accomplishment translating this text was as well.
Thank you! Yes, the translation is wonderful - I can only imagine the linguistic games in the original! Good to hear about Books of Jacob. I, unfortunately, put it down at about the half way mark, though I do want to get back to it. Agreed that that book and it's translation is an immense accomplishment though, even if I didn't really enjoy it. Good on you for finishing it!!
@@travelthroughstories I, like you, didn't 'like' Books of Jacob and am mostly relieved to finish it. I did like her novel 'Drive Your Plow Over The Bones Of The Dead' (which I read in between) a lot even though the astrology parts were a bit too much for me.
How is your Terra Nostra read going? I started it and the book has such a powerful opening but I was completely defeated within the first hundred pages. 'Leaf by Leaf' suggested me to try shorter fiction by Fuente first (like I did with Tokarczuk), I might actually do that.
i had to take a break from books of jacob!! hoping to get back to it before the year ends
@@Paromita_M It's going well, I think! I had a late start, so I'm still playing catch up. I think I'm on page 150 at the moment. It's dense and I'm definitely missing a lot, but so far, I'm really enjoying it. A few people in the group have read The Death of Artemio Cruz and have said that that was an "easier" read, so perhaps that's a good place to start?
@@travelthroughstories Thanks, noted! And happy reading. 🙂
appreciate hearing your thoughts on tomb of sand! so interesting to hear how you loved the first third of the novel, i personally preferred the last third lol. my favorite scene was when shree brought to life partition era authors. it was inspiring.
The final third of the novel is so so good! Reading through the second part, I wasn't sure how everything was going to come together, but it really did. Ma's speech was incredible. Thanks for watching! I really enjoyed your review a few weeks back as well.
@@travelthroughstories thank you, thank you!!!
Thank you for this review. I have been waiting for my library to get me a copy.
Thank you for watching! I hope your copy comes in soon.
Nice job - good luck
I need to get better at reading bigger books, I have this waiting for me for too long
It's so difficult to start bigger books, but once you get going, there's no better feeling (in my opinion). Tomb of Sand reads quite quickly, in my experience.
Thanks for the review! Can anyone in the comments give me some recommendations for other Indian literature, either classics or contemporary works?
Thanks for watching! I'd be interested in recommendations as well.
An excellent collection of contemporary short stories which also concern Partition is "An Unrestored Woman" by Shobha Rao. Also, one of my favourite novels of recent years is "The Parcel" by Anoshi Irani which deals with very difficult subject matter in a powerful way.
@@EricKarlAnderson Fantastic - thank you for sharing!
General: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh, The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
Partition Literature: Train To Pakistan by Khushwant Singh, Ice-Candy Man by Bapsi Sidhwa and my favourites - Short Stories by Sadat Hassan Manto and Pinjar (meaning cage) by Amrita Pritam translated into English as The Skeleton by Khushwant Singh.
There are also excellent Hindi films (imo) on Partition all available on TH-cam with English subtitles - 1) 'Garam Hawa' 2) '1947:Earth' (based on Ice-Candy Man) 3) 'Pinjar' (based on novel of the same name) 4) 'Hey Ram'.
All are disturbing and painful due to the content but massive trigger warnings in particular for 4).
You can read "train to pakistan" by late khushwant singh. It's a beautiful, emotional story.
Don't get me wrong but can i arrange the bookshelf properly? 🥺 ( it's kinda messy)
Thanks for the offer, but no way. I like it messy -- it's a working shelf, not a decoration.
I am so moved by your review that I am not saying anything now... I have read the book in Hindi.
I hope that is good thing 😅 Thanks for watching! I adored the translation, but I'm still jealous that you are able to read the original Hindi.
Excellent review, I dont read most of the indian-english writers coz they are mostly upper caste. Geetha's award was not celebrated in india much coz of her political views.
Came here because Eric Anderson recently talked about your channel. Great review!
Great to have you here - thank you for stopping by! Eric's channel is wonderful.
partition is the most cruel thing hapeend with both india nd pakistan ... people literally slaughtered at both sides ..
It’s pronounced Mahaabhaarata in Sanskrit and you leave off the final “a” in Hindi. You’re emphasizing the wrong syllables.