Humour saves The Crow Eaters from rhetoric and sentimentality, both common ailments found in the Urdu novel, and here it could learn a thing or two from Bapsi Sidhwa. This added value will certainly endear the novel to those who are approaching it for the first time and in a translated form. It is evident that Professor Memon has taken great pains over the translation and as is his method, tried to stay as close to the text as possible, even to the extent of being literal at times.

The Crow Eaters | Book reviews | RGfE - Reading Groups The Crow Eaters | Book reviews | RGfE - Reading Groups

The classic, atmospheric Australian thriller about the mysterious disappearance of a group of young girls.La saga di Freddy è densa di avvenimenti che lo porteranno a diventare uno degli uomini più ricchi e influenti di Lahore. Freddy è, in generale, un personaggio che mi è stato simpatico, anche se ha dei tratti indubbiamente oscuri, in particolare c'è stato un episodio che mi ha dato molto fastidio, un fastidio quasi fisico. Da lì mi è diventato insopportabile, ma rimane comunque un personaggio scoppiettante e interessante da seguire.

The Crow Eaters - AbeBooks - Sidhwa, Bapsi 9780006162971: The Crow Eaters - AbeBooks - Sidhwa, Bapsi

At the moment, no. Dr Anwaar Nasir, the publisher, and Bapsi had both asked me to, but I said I needed time to think about it. I would like to finish some other projects first. Kerewin’s cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival during a rainstorm of Simon, a mute six-year-old whose past seems to hold some terrible trauma. In his wake comes his foster-father Joe, a Maori factory worker with a nasty temper. Still, magic and superstition has as much influence on their characters, right from the cradle, after all they are descended from the Magi; yet all the multi-varied gods of the more dominant Indian religions are also given a token of reverence. Quite frankly, I am nervous about the novel’s publication in Urdu. I have no idea how a very different class of readers — and many more people read Urdu than English — will receive the book. After all, language does define who reads what. The more orthodox might find a lot to be peeved about — but of course this is pure conjecture.

Do you have plans for translating any of the other Bapsi Sidhwa novels, particularly Ice-Candy Man? Memon Sahib kept complaining that it was a very difficult book to translate. It probably was, but he has done the writing justice and I’m sure people are going to admire and appreciate his language and skill enormously. I certainly do. Sidhwa gives us the story of Faredoon Junglewalla a man who feels he is destined for great things and so embarks on a lifetime of social climbing. We meet him as a young man at the start of his ascent, travelling from his village in central India to the more opportune city of Lahore. The period nature of the book is evident from the fact that in 1903 (the year our story starts) Pakistan did not exist as a nation and so Lahore is still part of India but also for the fact that the character of his mother-in-law Jerbanoo is a staple of mother-in-law jokes from the early seventies when the book was written. “Take my mother-in-law…No please someone take her!”

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I’m grateful to Bapsi that she personally asked me to translate this novel. Every act of translation is, inherently, also an act of self-discovery. In the process you come to know your potentiality as much as your limitation. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2021-02-04 09:01:19 Boxid IA40055115 Camera Sony Alpha-A6300 (Control) Collection_set printdisabled External-identifier Seeking fortune and opportunity, Faredoon ‘Freddy’ Junglewalla and his family – his pregnant wife, infant daughter, and burdensome mother-in-law – move from their ancestral village in rural India to the bustling metropolis of Lahore. Welcomed by the small but tight-knit Parsi community, Freddy soon establishes a booming business and his family becomes revered and respected. But when tragedy forces Freddy to rethink his legacy, intimations of historic change loom on the country’s horizon.In the event, Carlton′s ‘worm’, Alex Jesaulenko, was comprehensively upstaged by his croweater rival, Barrie Robran, who in the end probably proved the decisive difference between the two sides.