Vani Foundation and Teamwork Arts will present the 2023 Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award to translator and artist Daisy Rockwell. The award honours translators who have consistently and qualitatively facilitated literary and linguistic exchange between at least two Indian or international languages.
Rockwell is the translator of numerous books from Hindi and Urdu, including Upendranath Ashk’s Falling Walls (2015), Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas (2016), and Khadija Mastur’s The Women’s Courtyard. Her translation of Krishna Sobti’s final novel, A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There (2019) was awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2019.
Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand (2021) won the International Booker Prize in 2022.
Rockwell has also written The Little Book of Terror, a volume of paintings and essays on the Global War on Terror (2012), and her novel Taste was published in 2014.
She will receive a cash award of Rs 1,00,000 and a trophy and testimonial letter. The award ceremony will be held on January 22, 2023 the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. The jury comprises Namita Gokhale (author and founder of Jaipur Literature Festival), Neeta Gupta, (Director of Jaipur BookMark), and Sundeep Bhutoria (Chairman of Prabha Khaitan Foundation).
The previous recipients of the award are translators Attoor Ravi Verma (2015-16) for Malayalam, Anamika (2016-17) for Bhojpuri, Rita Kothari (2017-18) for Sindhi, Teji Grover (2018-19) for Hindi, Rakhshanda Jalil (2019-20) for Urdu, and Arunava Sinha (2021-22) for Bengali.
