ITANAGAR, 3 Apr: US publisher Modern Library is all set to publish author Yeshe Dorjee Thongchi’s story collection, The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms.
Leila Tejani at Penguin Random House’s Modern Library imprint bought the world English rights to the collection in a deal brokered by Lucy Cleland at Frances Goldin. The book will be translated into English by writer Aruni Kashyap, the director of the Creative Writing Programme at the University of Georgia (Athens), American trade magazine The Publishers’ Marketplace, reported.
Referred to once as ‘Assam’s Chinua Achebe’ in Satsori magazine, Thongchi is one of the most critically acclaimed writers from India. His novels, short stories, and essays are widely read on the subcontinent and have been the subject of numerous scholarly dissertations. The manuscript, The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms, was previously short-listed for the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in translation in 2022.
Thongchi, a Sahitya Akademi Award, the Kalaguru Bishnu Rabha Award from Asom Sahitya Sabha, and Padma Shri awardee, is one of the few writers of his generation from Arunachal Pradesh – a state that has a large number of indigenous languages – who continues to write in Assamese. His fiction brings to the limelight the traditional lives of Arunachal’s many tribes and depicts their complex interactions with encroaching modernity.
“Astonishing and surprising, Thongchi is a hidden gem whose work will be a staple of global literature; he has no peer,” said his translator, Aruni Kashyap, adding that “His body of work is different from what global readers have read so far from India, and it expands our understanding of the South Asian experience in fascinating ways, dispelling stereotypes.”
Agent Lucy Cleland said, “The Smell of Bamboo Blossoms will open the window to a culture never seen before in English fiction.”
Commenting on his work, acquiring editor Tejani said, “Thongchi is International Booker material.”
Modern Library is an imprint of the Random House publishing group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
