Dehradun, Nov. 12 -- (Nominated in the category of English Fiction for the REC-VoW Book Awards, 2019)

Excerpts from the interview with Blake Smith:

You've mentioned that K Madavane is an accomplished writer and ranks alongside Guy de Maupassant and RK Narayan. How hard do you think it is as a translator to do justice to the original text while retaining its original essence?

What I found most difficult about translating Madavane's work is his skill at playing with different styles, tones and voices within a single story. For example, in "A Holy Cow in Varanasi", which at first glance is a relatively straightforward and comic story, the main narrative is regularly broken by somber meditations and sardonic observations separated from the...