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Winner, English PEN x SALT Award 2025 From the International Booker Prize-winning author-translator duo of Tomb of Sand, a powerful, kaleidoscopic novel about a fractured India, caught between rising fundamentalism and waning progressive ideals.
A city teeters on the edge of chaos. A society lies fractured along fault lines of faith and ideology. A playground becomes a battleground. A looming silence grips the public.
Against this backdrop, Shruti, a writer paralysed by the weight of events, tries to find her words, while Sharad and Hanif, academics whose voices are drowned out by extremism, find themselves caught between clichés and government slogans. And there's Daddu, Sharad's father, a beacon of hope in the growing darkness. As they each grapple with thoughts of speaking the unspeakable, an unnamed narrator takes on the urgent task of bearing witness.
First published in Hindi in 1998, Our City That Year is a novel that defies easy categorisation. It's a time capsule, a warning siren, and a desperate plea. Geetanjali Shree's shimmering prose, in Daisy Rockwell's nuanced and consummate translation, takes us into a fever dream of fragmented thoughts and half-finished sentences, mirroring the disjointed reality of a city under siege. Readers will find themselves haunted long after the final page, grappling with questions that echo far beyond India's borders
About the author
Geetanjali Shree is the author of five novels and five short story collections. Her work has been translated into English, French, German, Serbian, and some Indian languages. She has received and been shortlisted for a number of national and international awards and fellowships, including the 2022 International Booker Prize. She lives in New Delhi.
Daisy Rockwell is a painter, writer and translator living in the US. She has translated a number of classic works of Hindi and Urdu literature, including Upendranath Ashk's 'Falling Walls', Bhisham Sahni's 'Tamas', and Khadija Mastur's 'The Women's Courtyard'. Her 2019 translation of Krishna Sobti's 'A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There' was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize. She is the winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize.
Daisy Rockwell is a painter, writer and translator living in the US. She has translated a number of classic works of Hindi and Urdu literature, including Upendranath Ashk's Falling Walls, Bhisham Sahni's Tamas, and Khadija Mastur's The Women's Courtyard. Her 2019 translation of Krishna Sobti's A Gujarat Here, a Gujarat There was awarded the Modern Language Association’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Translation Prize.
