Interview by Nell WhittakerPortrait by Luca Strano

NW We’re here at the Miu Miu Literary Club in Milan, which this year is investigating “a woman’s education”. In your panel discussion, you mentioned the trivialising of female friendships and experiences. For obvious reasons, we tend to focus more on violence as a way that women are disappeared, but trivialisation is another element of patriarchal control. How might we recover experience from the trivial?

GS First of all, I wouldn’t want you to take anything I say and apply it across the board. But India is a patriarchal society and a very unequal society in all sorts of ways – things are abysmal for some people. However, the variety and pluralism of the country, which can be oppressive, also creates spaces that a more uniform society will not. I don’t want to downplay the conservative and the patriarchal side of Indian society, but when there is a kind of polyphony, or even cacophony, there are spaces created which permit people to get around the system. There are experiences in life where you see how a woman’s experience has been marginalised. When my father took me to a bank to open my first bank account, I was very happy to sign my full signature, and the manager said, “No, don’t do that, only sign your first name – your second name will change.” That upset me. All this came together when I decided I would use my mother’s first name, Shree, as my second name. There’s a systemic naturalisation of patriarchal authority all around us, and I try to pay attention to that.

NW Your novel Ret Samadhi won the International Booker Prize in 2022 in its English translation by Daisy Rockwell as Tomb of Sand. The book follows Ma, an 80-year-old woman who travels to Pakistan, where she grew up, at the end of her life. Can you tell me about the relationship between Ma and her daughter?

GS The mother has had a circuitous trajectory. She’s seen India before independence, she’s lived after independence, so she has a range of experience which the daughter does not. At a certain age, a mother and daughter develop a relationship where the daughter becomes the mother. The daughter thinks she will enjoy becoming the mother, but she wants Ma to be under her control – she doesn’t want her to develop a sense of independence and begin to strike out on her own. When the mother starts doing that, the daughter gets uncomfortable. There are certain ideas she holds intellectually and ideologically, such as gender equality, but she has not had to deal with these at close quarters. When the mother decides to become close with someone who is transgender, even the daughter cannot quite understand what this friendship is about. It is one thing to have grand ideas, but it is another thing to live them.

NW Is there anxiety about the disappearing generation that Ma belongs to, who lived through Partition? Do you think there’s any discomfort with some of the things that Ma remembers?

GS It is a generation that is disappearing, and with it a larger vision of a varied society. In the life that Ma led, there was difference, but there was also collaboration. I always say that the two communities, Hindus and Muslims, considered each other as belonging to two different religions, two different ways of life, and two different philosophical visions, but the important thing was that they were in the same place. It was like there was a serious conflict within the family, but there was a family. What Partition did was validate this idea that some do not belong. It demolished an edifice of unity. It seems to be the way with the world today, where people who are different are not seen easily as belonging to the same place. It’s not as if any of those thoughts have become redundant. Perhaps they are only more relevant for a world that is in more and more danger.

NW This year’s International Booker Prize shortlist came out yesterday, and it’s all small independent presses. What are your thoughts about the role of independent presses in literature, and translation in particular?

GS The big publishing houses are quite conservative and look at the market to ensure there is no threat to profits, while these smaller publishing houses are set up by dedicated, passionate individuals. Let’s not make it a completely idealistic picture – they want to make business as well – but they do it from the desire to make literature. There’s a kind of dedication, a sense of adventure and risk that small publishing houses are willing to take. They’re always looking for funds, but sheer love and passion keep them going. Sometimes, they bring out quite remarkable books because they take big risks. My publishing house in London, Tilted Axis, is small. It came about because Deborah Smith translated Han Kang’s 2007 novel, The Vegetarian, and together they won the International Booker Prize in 2016. Smith put her prize money into a publishing house interested in bringing Southeast Asian education to the Western world. Deborah had followed my work from well before Tomb of Sand, and when she discovered that there was a novel which had not been translated, she wrote to me. That’s just an example of their dedication and interest. There are quarters which encourage and promote these small publishers, but there’s not concerted, consolidated support.

NW What are you reading at the moment?

GS I have been traveling more than reading. I recently read Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck and then, for some strange reason, I carried on with German literature and picked up Herta Müller’s The Land of Green Plums. Müller won the Nobel Prize in 2009. Both novels describe bleak times and a bleak reality, but both are quite amazing. .