Sara Rai
Person and Work
Sara Rai (Sārā Rāy) is a respected Indian writer, an award-winning translator, and an editor. She was born on 15 September 1956 in Allahabad (Uttar Pradesh, India), where she still lives today. Rai studied history and English literature at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and at Allahabad University. Through her wide-ranging literary work she continues a family tradition: her grandfather Munshi Premchand is regarded as a co-founder of the modern Indian short story.
Language and Style
In richly detailed descriptions, Sara Rai probes individual worlds and ways of life in contemporary India. Rai is interested in how the frictions and conflicts of modern India are reflected in the thinking and actions of the individual. However universal the themes of her stories — growing old, the search for one's own place amid upheaval, and the experience of being 'different' — the circumstances of her protagonists are just as specifically Indian. They form a cross-section of different generations and milieus of Indian society: from the gay artist in Delhi, to the elderly Muslim woman living in a half-derelict mansion, to the fugitive rapist. Rai's strength lies in adopting a consistently subjective narrative perspective, precisely capturing personal dilemmas as well as the nuances of human interaction. This does not mean we are dealing with hermetically sealed micro-universes: the protagonists observe closely what happens around them. Social conflicts that appear only marginal become tangible through the individual — for instance, when in Alte Freunde [Old Friends] the first-person narrator, a Muslim, reflects on his fears and his feeling of being 'different' against the backdrop of violent clashes between Hindus and Muslims. The tensions that arise between tradition and modernity, nature and civilisation, the individual and society are not always resolved. Yet the stories mostly end on a conciliatory note: the gaze upon nature and things that lie outside our rational understanding of the world reveals a basic trust that a deeper meaning is hidden within everything after all.
For her literary work, Sara Rai received the Rückert Prize of the City of Coburg in 2019. Besides her writing, Rai is also a successful translator. The volume Blue is like Blue (2019, HarperCollins), containing short stories by Vinod Kumar Shukla that she translated into English together with A. K. Mehrotra, won the Mathrubhumi Book of the Year Award in 2020.
In 2021, Rai also chaired the jury for the prestigious JCB Prize for Literature.
Johanna Hahn
Œuvre
Rai has so far published four collections of short stories:
- Ababeel ki Uraan ("Flight of the Swallow"), 1997
- Biyabaan men ("In the Wilderness"), 2005
- Bhulbhulaiyan ("Labyrinth"), 2015
- Nabeela aur anya Kahaaniyam ("Nabeela and Other Stories"), 2022
Her debut novel Cheelvali Kothi ("The House with the Kites") appeared in 2010 with HarperCollins India. Her memoir Raw Umber appeared in January 2023 with Westland Books.
Published in German
- The story Mauern [Walls] (Divaar) first appeared in German translation in 2006, in the anthology Mauern und Fenster. Neue Erzählungen aus Indien, edited by Ulrike Stark (Draupadi Verlag, Heidelberg). (in German)
- Four further stories from Biyabaan men were published in 2013 in the volume In der Wildnis. Kommentierte Übersetzung und Interpretation moderner Hindi-Kurzgeschichten von Sara Rai [In the Wilderness. Annotated Translation and Interpretation of Modern Hindi Short Stories by Sara Rai] by Johanna Hahn (Regiospectra, Berlin). (in German)
- Im Labyrinth. Erzählungen von Sara Rai [In the Labyrinth. Stories by Sara Rai] — twelve stories and an essay, edited and translated by Johanna Hahn (Draupadi Verlag 2019). (in German)
- Raw Umber. Erinnerungen an eine indische Künstlerfamilie [Raw Umber. Memories of an Indian Family of Artists] — from the English by Johanna Hahn and Reinhold Schein (Draupadi Verlag 2026). (in German)
Excerpt
Readings with Sara Rai: see Readings (in German) (2019 reading tour for the Rückert Prize award ceremony).
Further Links
- Sara Rai on Wikipedia
- Article in the journal Südasien (Heidelberg University) (in German)
- Further article in the journal Südasien (in German)