| This dissertation contains a selection of short stories by the leading contemporary Indian writer Nirmal Verma (b. 1929), translated from Hindi into English, and with a substantial Critical Introduction. An appendix provides the Hindi originals of the stories.; The fourteen stories in this collection deal with the themes of exile and dislocation. Many are about Indian travelers in the West. The stories are arranged in roughly chronological order: not the chronology of their composition but the chronology of an exile's experience. Thus they describe one possible arc of an exiled life, from the journey to the West ("A Beginning") to the return to India and the separation from family both in India ("Last Summer") and abroad ("One Day's Guest").; The English stories are close literal translations of the Hindi, and they strive to match Verma's tone in the Hindi. Most of the Hindi stories display the "sad and genteel concern" that is a highlight of Verma's style. The translator's motivations, location, and approach to these translations are examined in the lengthy Critical Introduction.; The Introduction raises other issues significant to Translation Studies, most notably questions about the identity and location of a translator who translates from the literatures of a colonized culture into the language of the colonizers. Section I of the Introduction, in its consideration of language, exile, and translation in a postcolonial context, uses an example of a translation from Bengali to highlight the issue of the translator's identity; it also discusses "political resistance" and "linguistic resistance" in postcolonial translation and makes a case for Indian translations of Indian literatures.; Section II focuses on Nirmal Verma, on the stories in this collection, and on this translator's approach. Issues of identity and translation in Verma's fiction are discussed, focusing on the story "Jalti jhari" ["Burning Bush"], along with other points of interest. Etymological and other connections between the word "bhram" [perplexity, confusion, doubt, suspicion, error], which occurs often in this set of stories, and "bhraman" [wandering, roaming, a journey] are underlined. |
