Like many others, I thought I had seen the worst of the rude shocks of 2020 when Delhi was scorched this February in a conflagration of hat...
Like many others, I thought I had seen the worst of the rude shocks of 2020 when Delhi was scorched this February in a conflagration of hate and violence. But then along came Covid-19. And as devastating as the riots had been, the pandemic has eroded one’s sense of proportion entirely. What remains clear, in the five months since our lives were first upended by Covid-19, is that nobody knows when this nightmare will be over.
How does one even begin to comprehend what this means for the future of publishing – especially in a country already so constrained by economic disparities and a struggling literacy rate, and where reading is still largely considered a luxury rather than a way of life? And the prospects become even more skewed when it comes to English-language trade publishing, which comprises only a thin slice of the publishing pie.
Boatmen between two worlds
In the wake of successive lockdowns, with book sales shrinking across the board and some bookstores being forced to close down, I found myself thinking in particular about translations, and how the pandemic might make it even more challenging to publish these. Translations have been intrinsic not only to my reading life but to my journey...
