Harshaneeyam Harshaneeyam

In this episode, Senior translator Alex Zucker spoke about his work, Translation contracts and the Czech Author Jachym Topol.
Alex Zucker has translated novels by the Czech authors Magdaléna Platzová, Jáchym Topol, Bianca Bellová, Petra Hůlová, J. R. Pick, Tomáš Zmeškal, Josef Jedlička, Heda Margolius Kovály, Patrik Ouředník, and Miloslava Holubová. He has also Englished stories, plays, subtitles, young adult and children’s books, song lyrics, reportages, essays, poems, philosophy, art history, and an opera.
Apart from translating, he organises, on a volunteer basis, with the National Writers Union and the New York City chapter of SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice).
Conversation: 
Harshaneeyam: Welcome, Alex, to Harshaneeyam.
Alex Zucker: Hi, Anil. I am so glad to be here. Thank you for having me. 
Harshaneeyam: Before we move on to your literary journey, translations and all, I follow you on Twitter, and I see that you are very vocal about the current situation in Gaza. I also read that you worked for a human rights organisation earlier.
Alex Zucker: Yes, of course. For about five years, I was the communications officer for a genocide prevention organisation called the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation, AIPR. Now, as a communications officer, I was always a little bit disturbed at our name, because actually we had nothing to do with peace and reconciliation. We were working in genocide prevention. But they’ve since changed their name, by the way. But [that was] after I left. This was a small organisation, about five staff people based in New York City, doing education and training for mid-level government officers in genocide prevention. The idea of the organisation was that, all too often in history, there are government leaders whose countries are engaging in atrocities that are not quite maybe yet at genocide, or [actually] genocide, and of course there can be resistance from outside the government, [but] unless the government decides to stop it, it’s not going to stop. So the idea of [AIPR] was if they could get to these mid-level government officials, those people would rise up [through the ranks] and become the leaders of their country, and they would be people committed to preventing genocide. I want to say also that by prevention, what we meant was not military intervention. That’s stopping, maybe, a genocide in progress, but preventing meaning that it never happens in the first place. Also, keeping in mind that genocide, as people have been pointing out in relation to the situation in Gaza, but as in any genocide, it doesn’t necessarily involve killing, right? It can be preventing births within a group, any kind of creation of conditions that make it impossible for a group to survive. The key is that the intention is to destroy the group as such. So it has to be focused on a group of people, not just individuals. Having worked in that organisation for five years, I read a lot about genocide historically. I also was following very closely many genocides that were happening in the world at that time. For instance, in Myanmar, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which is happening again now, in Sudan, that was happening the first time back then. I think the reason that I feel compelled to speak up about Gaza is because the genocide is being perpetrated by a state, Israel, that gets a huge amount of support from the government that I pay taxes to. To me, that’s a very straightforward moral and ethical equation. 95 per cent of the aid that the U.S. sends to Israel is military, right? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, now the second time, two years ago, and probably committing genocide there as well, but none of my money goes to Russia, so I don’t feel responsible [for that]. I mean, it’s not that I don’t care about what’s happening to Ukrainians, but as a human...

The Guest for Today's Episode is Tiffany Tsao.
Tiffany Tsao is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel The Majesties  and the Oddfits fantasy trilogy (so far, The Oddfits and The More Known World.)
She has translated five books from Indonesian into English. For her translation of Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington, she was awarded the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and the 2023 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize. Her translation of Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s 'Happy Stories, Mostly' was awarded the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses and longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.
Born in the United States and of Chinese-Indonesian descent, her family returned to Southeast Asia when she was 3. She spent her formative years in Singapore and Indonesia before moving to the US to study at a university. She has a B.A. in English literature from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in English literature from UC Berkeley. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
You can buy her work using the links in the Show Notes.
You can follow Harshaneeyam Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcast apps.
To buy 'Happy Stories Mostly' -
https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/happy
To buy 'People from Bloomington' -
https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/blooming
To Buy 'The Majesties' -
https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/majesties
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***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.


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Today’s guest is Aananth Daksnamurthy. He is speaking about his passion for reading and publishing and his upcoming trip to India and Srilaka to look for literature for publication as a part of the SALT initiative.  Aananth Daksnamurthy is a Fulbright scholar graduating with a master's in publishing from New York University. His first book, Acquisition, a Swedish novel titled The Details, was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2024. Ananth is also part of the SALT contingent, visiting India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh this year and scouting literature for publication in the USA and UK.
SALT—‘South Asian Languages in Translation’ is an initiative by the University of Chicago to bring South Asian literature in English Translation to the Anglophone world. Translators Daniel Hahn, Jason Grunebaum, Arunava Sinha, Daisy Rockwell, and Author VV Ganeshanandan are part of the team leading SALT.
SALT Travel Grant
About the SALT Project
Harshaneeyam: Welcome to Harshaneeyam Aananth.
Aananth Daksnamurthy: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 
H: How did you develop an interest in literature? 
A: I was born and raised in a small town, Trichy, in Tamil Nadu. From childhood, I started reading pretty early. With all the supplements, usually, the newspaper supplements that come, these are Siruvar Malar, Siruvar Mani, the kid supplementary books I started reading, and mostly newspapers. That's how my literary journey started. I was not a very avid reader initially. I only engaged with news and media in general, but I followed the traditional route of higher education and went on to do engineering. I'm a mechanical engineer with a bachelor's degree and went on to do a postgrad diploma in liberal arts at Ashoka University as a young India fellow. This was partly due to some elective courses I took during my final semester, and I needed to explore more humanities. It gave me a lot of exposure, and two courses stood out.
I took one critical writing course, and I began to write. I became a very effective communicator both in writing and in oral communication. Then, I took another course, Culture and Communication, which was a sociology course. This course gave me a lens on caste, religion, sexuality, and gender. These two courses moulded me into a very different person from who I was initially. Then, I went on to work with ‘The Print’. YIF also gave me a thirst for reading, and I've just started reading a lot of nonfiction. That was a phase when I was reading a lot of nonfiction coming out of Ashoka, more public policy, economics, or history-related nonfiction. I used to go to Delhi Tamil Sangam's library and pick some of these Tamil books there. I initially started with Prabhanjan's short stories, a collection of short stories by the Tamil writer Prabhanjan. I've explored many authors, many genres within Tamil, and contemporary Tamil writing.
And yeah, I've read Jeyamohan. He's a great writer. I love his work. Nooru Naarkaaligal is one of my favourite works from Aram. I've heard so much of S Ra. S Ramakrishnan is another Tamil writer and Sahitya Akademi Award winner. In those days, his videos were podcasts. So, the YouTube videos were an hour or two long. He introduced, at least to this generation, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Pushkin. So, a huge introduction to Russian literature came through S. Ramakrishnan. And that's when I remember I started reading much more fiction. Again, short stories were my favourite format. It's also easy to finish short stories and move on to another story, But translated fiction was very recent. I've...

Romesh Gunesekera is on Harshaneeyam talking about evaluating the International Booker Prize - 2024 and his journey as a reader and writer.
Romesh Gunesekera was born in Colombo and lives in London. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently judging the 2024 International Booker Prize.
(00:00) Introduction to Ramesh Bhunasekara and His Literary Journey

(01:16) The Beginnings of a Reader Turned Writer

(07:38) The Evolution of a Writer: From Reader to International Author

(09:53) Diving Deep into 'Reef': A Booker Prize Journey

(16:12) The Art and Impact of Translation in Literature

(18:54) Inside the International Booker Prize 2024: A Judge's Perspective

(28:09) Reflecting on the Magic of Writing and Reading

33:58 Ramesh Bhunasekara's Current Literary EndeavorsHe is internationally acclaimed for fiction that explores the key themes of our times — political, ecological, and economic — through novels and stories of wide appeal. His fiction over the years includes Reef, shortlisted for the Booker prize in 1994, The Match. and Noontide Toll. His most recent novel, Suncatcher, returns to an earlier era in Sri Lanka and is a story of divided loyalties and endangered friendships in the turbulent 1960s.He has chaired the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Gratiaen Prize in Sri Lanka. .He has taught creative writing and run workshops around the world. He is also the co-author of the Writers’ & Artists’ Companion to Novel Writing.
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***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.


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In this episode, Book Blogger, Reviewer, Stuart Allen spoke about the novel 'Undiscovered' and his passion for book reading.
Stuart Allen Lives in Chesterfield near the Peak District in UK. He works for the NHS to support patients with learning disabilities in the community to avoid going into hospital. He started his blog 'Winston'sdad' 14 years ago.
Initially, the challenge was to read 52 books from 52 countries; having done that, the focus has predominantly been on books in translation. He has reviewed over 1300 books from 110-plus countries.
He has shadowed the old independent Foreign Fiction Prize and now the Booker International. Where they read and make their own shortlist and choose winner out of longlisted books.
He has also started the hashtag #translationthurs on twitter to promote books in translation.
To Read his blog on Literature in Translation. -
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*Contact us - harshaneeyam@gmail.com
***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.


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'హాటకం' తమిళ రచయిత జయమోహన్ రాసిన కథ. తెలుగులోకి అవినేని భాస్కర్ అనువదించారు. క్రితం వారం 'ఉదయిని' వెబ్ మేగజైన్ లో ప్రచురింపబడింది.
ఈ లింక్ లో కథను చదువుకోవచ్చు.
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There is a mention of suicide in the story. User's Discretion is advised.
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*Contact us - harshaneeyam@gmail.com
***Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Interviewees in interviews conducted by Harshaneeyam Podcast are those of the Interviewees and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harshaneeyam Podcast. Any content provided by Interviewees is of their opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual, or anyone or anything.


This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

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