Ira Math­ur, Guardian jour­nal­ist and au­thor of Love The Dark Days (win­ner of the 2023 Bo­cas Prize for Lit­er­a­ture, (non-fic­tion), in­ter­viewed the In­ter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize win­ner Gee­tan­jali Shree to a packed au­di­ence at Nalis at the re­cent­ly con­clud­ed Bo­cas Lit Fest, the largest lit­er­ary gath­er­ing in the An­glo­phone Caribbean in Port-of-Spain, on April 27.

Shree, who trav­elled from In­dia es­pe­cial­ly for the event at the NGC Bo­cas Lit Fest, made his­to­ry when her nov­el, “Tomb Of Sand” (Tilt­ed Ax­is Press, 2021), be­came the first Hin­di nov­el to win the In­ter­na­tion­al Book­er Prize Award in 2022. The book was first pub­lished in Hin­di as ‘Ret Samad­hi’ and was lat­er trans­lat­ed in­to Eng­lish by Amer­i­can trans­la­tor Daisy Rock­well. With five nov­els, a bi­og­ra­phy of Hin­di and Ur­du writer Prem­c­hand, short sto­ries, and aca­d­e­m­ic pa­pers, Shree is a dis­tin­guished lit­er­ary name in In­dia and now glob­al­ly. “Tomb of Sand” has been trans­lat­ed in­to a dozen lan­guages. A US edi­tion was pub­lished by Harper­Collins.

The book traces the trans­for­ma­tive jour­ney of 80-year-old Ma, who be­comes de­pressed af­ter the death of her hus­band. She then de­cides to trav­el to Pak­istan, con­fronting trau­ma that had re­mained un­re­solved since she was a teenag­er who sur­vived the Par­ti­tion ri­ots in 1947, when In­dia and Pak­istan were split in two and more than a Mus­lim. Hin­dus butchered one an­oth­er, and many were dis­placed.

Rather than re­spond to tragedy with se­ri­ous­ness, Gee­tan­jali Shree’s play­ful tone and ex­u­ber­ant word­play re­sult in a book that is en­gag­ing, fun­ny, and ut­ter­ly orig­i­nal, at the same time as be­ing an ur­gent and time­ly protest against the de­struc­tive im­pact of bor­ders and bound­aries, whether be­tween re­li­gions, coun­tries, or gen­ders.

Books by au­thors from the US Vir­gin Is­lands, T&T, and Ja­maica have won the 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture in the po­et­ry, fic­tion, and non­fic­tion cat­e­gories.

“How to Say Baby­lon” by Ja­maican au­thor Safiya Sin­clair was an­nounced as the over­all 2024 OCM Bo­cas Prize for Caribbean Lit­er­a­ture win­ner.

The Fer­gu­son Re­port: An Era­sure by Nicole Sealey was se­lect­ed as the win­ner of the Po­et­ry genre.

Hun­gry Ghosts by Trinida­di­an Kevin Jared Ho­sein is the win­ner in the fic­tion cat­e­go­ry.