Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (1983- ): Author Profile
Shekhar has won considerable national attention and praise for this English language works, including The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey (2014), The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories (2015), Jwala Kumar and the Gift of Fire: Adventures in Champakbagh (2018), and My Father's Garden (2018). He also translated Manoj Rupda's novel Kaale Adhyaay into English as I Named My Sister Silence; that translation was published in 2023.
A brief summary of the prizes and recognition Shekhar has received is in the following from Wikipedia:
For his debut novel, The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey, Shekhar won the 2015 Yuva Puraskar,[34][13] was shortlisted for the 2014 Hindu Literary Prize[35] and a 2014 Crossword Book Award in the Fiction category,[36] longlisted for the 2016 International Dublin Literary Award,[37] and jointly won the 2015 Muse India Young Writer Award.[38] The Mysterious Ailment of Rupi Baskey was named by The Hindu in December 2019 as one of the ten best fiction books of the decade.[39]
For his second book, The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories, Shekhar was shortlisted for the 2016 Hindu Literary Prize.[40] The Adivasi Will Not Dance: Stories was included by Frontline (magazine) in August 2022 in a list of 25 books “that light up the path to understanding post-Independence Indian literature.”[41]
A representative quote from "The Adivasi Will Not Dance":
“But what can we do? They outnumber us. [...] They are only interested in making us sing and dance at their weddings. If they come to help us, they will say that we Santhals need to stop eating cow-meat and pig-meat, that we need to stop drinking haandi. They too want to make us forget our Sarna religion, convert us into Safa Hor, and swell their numbers to become more valuable vote banks. Safa Hor, the pure people, the clean people, but certainly not as clean and pure as themselves, that’s for sure.[...] In the eyes of the Hindus, we Santhals can only either be Kiristan or the almost Safa Hor. We are losing our Sarna faith, our identities, and our roots. We are becoming people from nowhere.” (Shekhar, “The Adivasi Will Not Dance”)
Journalistic writings by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar:
At the Caravan
Short story by Shekhar available online:
"Joga"