Geetanjali Shree

Shree grew up in Uttar Pradesh and earned a doctorate in Hindi literature before publishing steadily in Hindi since the 1980s, working in a formally experimental register that set her apart from Hindi fiction's dominant social realism.

Tomb of Sand (2018) follows Ma, an octogenarian widow in northern India who sinks into depression after her husband's death, then rises again to cross the border into Pakistan and confront the unhealed trauma of Partition, its restless wordplay and shifting registers refusing the solemnity the subject usually demands.

Its 2022 English translation won the International Booker Prize, the first for any Hindi-language work and the first for a South Asian language, a milestone Shree has called a win for the whole Hindi literary ecosystem rather than for her alone.