Life Writing and Translation: Indian Perspectives

The steady rise of auto/biographical narrations across various Indian languages, including English and translations into English, as different forms of life writing marks a moment of social and political ferment. This book aims to explore the expansive field of life writing, both as a practice and a genre of literature, and its intersections with translation. Addressing the affinities between life writing and translation, and the emancipatory possibilities it offers, can shift the focus from individual texts to a space for encounter between languages, identities, and cultures.

Focusing on how life writing in India has emerged as a distinct literary and publishing phenomenon in recent times, the volume traces the diversity and richness of the various bhasha traditions of life writing and looks at how they have gained recognition both in regional languages and in translation. Traversing various languages, the book examines memoirs of incarceration and exile, narratives of marginality, literary memoirs, biography, and oral songs of protest among others, and engages with life writing’s affective and political potential in documenting everyday lives and struggles, and fostering solidarity among readers. Exploring the ways life writing and translation are mutually implicated, it deliberates on the ethical, political, and translational significance of life writing and seeks to spark academic interest and further research in this field.

This volume will serve as a rich resource for university students, researchers, and academics of literature, history, sociology, cultural studies, translation studies, and comparative studies, and those who are interested in South Asian literature.

Mukul Chaturvedi is Associate Professor in the Department of English, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi. Her doctoral research is on women’s testimonial literature from, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her areas of interest include postcolonial literatures, autobiography studies, life writing, testimonies from conflict zones, gender and/in translation. She has recently published an edited volume titled, Life Writing, Representation, and Identity: Global Perspectives (Routledge, 2024) and is currently working on the second volume of life writing.