Geetanjali Shree

In 2022, her novel Ret Samadhi (2018), translated into English as Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell, won the International Booker Prize. Aside from fiction, she has written critical works on Premchand.

Geetanjali Shree studied at Jawaharlal Nehru University. The recorded working language is Hindi. The field of work recorded is literary activity and belletristic literature. Works named in the authority record are Tomb of Sand. Distinctions recorded are International Booker Prize and BBC 100 Women.

• Name — Geetanjali Shree • Birth Name — Geetanjali Pandey • Born — 12 June 1957 • Birthplace — Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, India • Language — Hindi • Genre — Novels, short stories • Notable Works — Tomb of Sand • Awards — International Booker Prize (2022)

Shree was born in the city of Mainpuri in Uttar Pradesh state on 12 June 1957. Her father, Anirudh Pandey, was a civil servant, causing her family to live in various towns throughout Uttar Pradesh. Shree says that it was this upbringing in Uttar Pradesh, along with a lack of children's books in English, that gave her a rich connection to Hindi. She is ancestrally from Ghazipur District, Gondaur village. At university, she studied history. She completed a BA at Lady Shri Ram College, and a master's degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. After beginning her PhD work at Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda on the Hindi writer Munshi Premchand, Shree became more interested in Hindi literature. She wrote her first short story during her PhD, and turned to writing after graduation.

Her first story, "Bel Patra" (1987), was published in the literary magazine Hans and was followed by a collection of short stories Anugoonj (1991). The English translation of her novel Mai catapulted her to fame. The novel is about three generations of women and the men around them, in a North Indian middle-class family. Mai has been translated into several languages, including Serbian and Korean. It has also been translated into English by Nita Kumar, who was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Translation Prize, and into Urdu by Bashir Unwan with a preface by Intizar Hussain. Other translations of the novel include a French translation by Annie Montaut, and a German translation by Reinhold Schein. Shree's second novel Hamara Shahar Us Baras is set loosely after the incidents of Babri Masjid demolition. Its English translation by Daisy Rockwell, her second collaboration with Shree, was published in 2024. A review on Scroll.in regards the novel's form as perhaps the only way to capture the "psychic context of communalism" that concerns the novel and its social world. Her fourth novel, Khālī jagah (2006), has been translated into English by Nivedita Menon as The Empty Space, French by Nicola Pozza as Une place vide, and German by Georg Lechner and Nivedita Menon as Im leeren Raum. Her fifth novel, Ret Samadhi (2018), has been commended by Alka Saraogi for "its sweeping imagination and sheer power of language, unprecedented and uninhibited". It has been translated into English by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand, and into French by Annie Montaut as Au-delà de la frontière. On 26 May 2022, Tomb of Sand won the International Booker Prize, becoming the first book in Hindi and the first from an Indian writer to receive the accolade.

• Mai (1993) – translated as Mai Silently Motherly by Nita Kumar (2017) • Hamara Shahar Us Baras (1998) – translated as Our City That Year by Daisy Rockwell (2024) • Tirohit (2001) – translated as The Roof Beneath Their Feet by Rahul Soni (2013) • Khali Jagah (2006) – translated as The Empty Space by Nivedita Menon (2011) • Ret Samadhi (2018) – translated as Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell (2022) • Sah-Saa | सह-सा (2025)