Westland Books to release new translation of Kalki’s ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ by Nandini Krishnan

Author and award-winning translator Nandini Krishnan said, “So many generations of Tamil speakers and readers have grown up with ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ that it is quite incredible to think the work didn’t exist 75 years ago. I

Hyderabad: Westland Books announced the release of the first book in a new multi-volume translation of ‘Ponniyin Selvan’. The Tamil classic has been in the news with the release of Mani Ratnam’s movies, ‘PS-1’ and ‘PS-2’, starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Trisha Krishnan, Karthi, Vikram and Aishwarya Lekshmi, among others.

Author and award-winning translator Nandini Krishnan said, “So many generations of Tamil speakers and readers have grown up with ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ that it is quite incredible to think the work didn’t exist 75 years ago. I am among a legion of women named for one of its characters. For years, I have been quietly working on the translation, hoping to capture the nuances of Kalki’s writing for the English reader. I’m delighted that the series has found a home with Eka/Westland Books.”

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Karthika VK, publisher, Westland Books, said, “Nandini’s translation of ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ is elegant, lyrical, energetic. It embraces the detail and expansiveness of the original text while retaining its pace and depth. I am certain that this timeless epic will find a whole new generation of readers with this translation.”

The interest that ‘Ponniyin Selvan’ generated when it was first serialised in ‘Kalki’ and the manifold increase in the circulation of the magazine saw it published in multiple volumes soon after. Critics used the term ‘Kalki Tamil’ to describe its style where slang alternates with scholarship, wordplay with ecstatic prose and vivid imagery. Kalki’s words are crafted with care, his prose is lyrical and his linguistic manipulations are difficult to move into another tongue.

Nandini Krishnan rises to the challenge by going back to the original text and rendering it anew without condensing or paraphrasing the narrative — devices that are apparent in the existing translations. For ease of reading, and because every chapter is a cliffhanger, with plot twists and turns befitting an airport read, each of the original five volumes has been divided further, into shorter books that are easy to hold and carry around.

Book One, ‘The First Flood’, introduces us to the world of the Cholas and quite incredibly marries a page-turner of a story with travelogue and history.