Age of Frenzy
Page 29
Ten years passed. My translations of Sail’s Konkani novellas Hawthan (The Kiln, 2011) and Aranyakand (Forest Saga, 2015) were published during this period, but the translation of Yug Sanvar found no takers. Mainstream English publishers could publish two translations with these resources, I was told. Could the author be persuaded to bring the book down to a more acceptable size?
Sail, in the meanwhile, translated Yug Sanvar into Marathi and the book received critical acclaim. As an author–translator, he was free to adapt, condense or even re-write parts of the book for its Marathi version. This experience of taking a fresh look at the novel finally tilted the scale. He agreed to prune the Konkani book, taking care to preserve the storyline, the theme and spirit of the original. Age of Frenzy, therefore, is a ‘streamlined’ translation of Yug Sanvar.
This translation has been ‘moth-balled’ and then brought out and worked upon many times over the last decade as we swung between hope and despair.
Thank you, Sail bab, for having faith.
Thank you, Keerti Ramachandra, for your gentle nit-picking and for the fresh shape you gave to this much-mauled script.
And thank you, Minakshi, and the team at HarperCollins for turning this dream into reality.
About the Book
It’s 1510. The Portuguese arrive in Goa, armed with guns, swords and crucifixes, at the agricultural village of Adolshi. As tigers prowl, cow bones appear in wells, chariot wheels break on festival day, a sense of foreboding fills the Hindus who have been living there peacefully.
The Portuguese king has licenced Jesuits to take over, and staunch white men move about preaching the word of the Son of God. Land is seized, families break. But Padre Simao Peres is convinced that love and not force will bring about a change of heart. With the Inquisition looming like an axe over everyone’s heads, a saga of choice plays out for the people of the village.
Recounting a forgotten history, Mahabaleshwar Sail’s epic novel Age of Frenzy documents a turbulent past of religious clashes, caste hierarchies and power shifts which changed the ethos of the western coastline of India forever.
About the Authors
Mahabaleshwar Sail is a prolific writer in Konkani with four short story collections and six novels, many of which have been translated into English and other languages. Born into a family of farmers near Karwar in northern Karnataka, Sail served in the Indian Army during the Indo–Pak war in 1965. After brief stints in the police force and as a forest guard, he served as a postmaster in Goa. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award for Tarangam, a short story collection (1993), and the Katha Award (2007).
Vidya Pai began translating full-time from Konkani after she won an award at the first Katha–British Council Translation Contest in 1993. She has translated five Konkani novels: Pundalik Naik’s Acchev (The Upheaval); Mahabaleshwar Sail’s Kali Ganga (Kali Ganga), Hawthan (The Kiln) and Aranyakand (Forest Saga); Damodar Mauzo’s novel Karmelin (Karmelin); a short story collection Rumadful (Mirage and Other Stories), and Kaleidoscope, a collection of essays by Ravindra Kelekar.
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First published in India in 2017 by Harper Perennial
An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Copyright © Mahabaleshwar Sail 2017
Translation copyright © Vidya Pai 2017
P.S. Section copyright © Mahabaleshwar Sail, Vidya Pai 2017
The essay ‘A Saga of Choice and Faith’ was published as ‘A Saga of a Frenzied Age’ in 50 Writers 50 Books Eds. Pradeep Sebastian and Chandra Siddan (HarperCollins India, 2013).
P-ISBN: 978-93-5264-159-8
Epub Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 978-93-5264-160-4
2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
Mahabaleshwar Sail asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
This is a work of fiction and all characters and incidents described in this book are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.
Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers India
Cover image: iStock
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