Vishwas Patil’s fast-paced novel DUDIYA: IN YOUR BURNING LAND translated from Marathi by Nadeem Khan

“My rendezvous with Dudiya and her Naxal infested state happened when I went to that Naxal-dominated area as a senior election officer. I remember vividly the brave policemen, and surrendered young Naxal men and women.

on Jul 17, 2023

Vishwas Patil’s fast-paced novel DUDIYA: IN YOUR BURNING LAND translated from Marathi by Nadeem Khan

3rd July 2023, New Delhi:

Niyogi Books is delighted to announce the publication of Dudiya: In your Burning Land by Vishwas Patil, originally written in Marathi and translated by Nadeem Khan.

This is a story of a spirited young Adivasi girl who challenges conventional norms both within her impoverished tribe and inside the notorious Naxal camp by simply trying to live a life of dignity and independence. Set in the state of Chattisgarh and the insurgency period of Naxalites, the novel also brings forth the struggle of the Adivasis to save their lands.

Announcing the release, the author Vishwas Patil says, “My rendezvous with Dudiya and her Naxal infested state happened when I went to that Naxal-dominated area as a senior election officer. I remember vividly the brave policemen, and surrendered young Naxal men and women. I met not one but several ‘Dudiyas’ that day...On one side are the police and government machinery, while on the other are the AK-47 wielding Naxals; and seeing those poor, desperate people of the area sandwiched between these two disturbs me even to this day. The meeting with Dudiya still brings back the smell of gunpowder to my nostrils.”

Announcing the release, the translator Nadeem Khan says, “Translating Dudiya was an adventure for me all the way. It gave me all the joy that the Marathi reader would have extracted from the original: the fast-paced narrative, the surrealistic episodes and the sheer variety of characters that people the story. The package becomes utterly mind-boggling because nothing is imagined––only recorded the way it happened! The delightful turns of phrase, of course, made it unputdownable. Carrying all this zing into English, however, was a challenge, and therefore, an equally thrilling adventure. How well the challenge has been met? Only the reader is qualified to judge that.”

On publishing the book Trisha De Niyogi, Director and COO, Niyogi Books says, “We are delighted to introduce an urgent voice like Vishwas Patil, one the most important and prolific Marathi writers of our times, to a wider readership through this English translation of his seminal work Dudiya--a novel that captures the heartbreaking reality of the Naxal menace plaguing present-day Chhattisgarh.”

In his praise for the book Jnanpith Award winning Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo writes, "The great novelist Vishwas Patil has delineated beautifully the human strife of the poor people trapped in the clutches of Destiny. This novel leaves the reader dumbstruck."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vishwas Patil is one of the most prolific and best-known authors in Marathi. He has won upwards of forty awards, including the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award and the Indira Goswami National Literary Award of Assam. Of his eighteen novels, many have been translated into major Indian languages, as also English.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Nadeem Khan has been a teacher of English for fifty years. After retiring as the Head, Department of Languages, from an Amravati college, for the next eight years he served as the Regional Director of the Western Regional Centre of the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication. He has translated fifteen Marathi books into English.