Daisy Rockwell (born 1969) is an American

Hindi Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...

and

Urdu Urdu (; , , ) is an Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in South Asia. It is the Languages of Pakistan, national language and ''lingua franca'' of Pakistan. In India, it is an Eighth Schedule to the Constitution of Indi ...

language translator and artist. She has translated a number of classic works of Hindi and Urdu literature, including Upendranath Ashk's ''Falling Walls'',

Bhisham Sahni Bhisham Sahni (8 August 1915 – 11 July 2003) was an Indian writer, playwright in Hindi and an actor, most famous for his novel ''Tamas'' ("Darkness"/'Ignorance") and the television screenplay adaptation of the same name, a powerful and passio ...

's '' Tamas'', and Khadija Mastur's ''The Women's Courtyard''. Her 2021 translation of Geetanjali Shree's '' Tomb of Sand'' was the first South Asian book to win the

International Booker Prize The International Booker Prize (formerly known as the Man Booker International Prize) is an international literary award hosted in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the International Prize to complement the Man Booker Prize, as the Boo ...

. Rockwell was awarded the 2023 Vani Foundation Distinguished Translator Award by the Vani Foundation and Teamwork Arts, during the 2023 edition of the

Jaipur Literature Festival The Jaipur Literature Festival (JLF), often hailed as the "''greatest literary show on Earth''," is a renowned annual cultural and literary festival held in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. Established in 2006 by writers Namita Gokhale and William Dalry ...

. ''Tomb of Sand'' also won her the 2022

Warwick Prize for Women in Translation The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation is an annual award for work by a female author translated into English and published by a UK-based or Irish publisher during the previous calendar year. The prize was established in 2017 "to address the g ...

. Her novel Alice Sees Ghosts and her collection of poems about translation, Mixed Metaphors, are both forthcoming from Bloomsbury India in 2025. Her memoir Our Friend, Art is forthcoming with

Pushkin Press Pushkin Press is a British-based publishing house dedicated to publishing novels, essays, memoirs and children's books. The London-based company was founded in 1997 and is notable for publishing authors such as Stefan Zweig, Marcel Aymé, Antal ...

in 2026.

Personal life

Rockwell grew up in western

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

. Both her parents are artists. She is the granddaughter of the painter, illustrator, and author

Norman Rockwell Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of Culture of the United States, the country's culture. Roc ...

, and is a painter herself.

Education

Rockwell has been a student of Hindi, Latin, French, German, and ancient Greek for many years. She received her PhD in

South Asian Literature South Asian literature refers to the literature that is composed by authors in the Indian subcontinent and its South Asian diaspora, diaspora. It has an extensive history with some of the earliest known pieces of literature. South Asia has many dif ...

from the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...

, where she studied Hindi literature, translation, and social sciences under A K Ramanujan, Susanne Hoeber Rudolph and Colin P Masica. In 1998, she received a grant to write her PhD dissertation on the Hindi author Upendranath Ashk.

Works

Rockwell has published numerous translations from Hindi and Urdu, including her collection of translations of selected stories by Upendranath Ashk, ''Hats and Doctors'' (

Penguin Penguins are a group of aquatic flightless birds from the family Spheniscidae () of the order Sphenisciformes (). They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. Only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is equatorial, with a sm ...

, 2013), Ashk's ''Falling Walls'' (Penguin, 2015),

’s '' Tamas'' (Penguin, 2016), and Khadija Mastur’s ''The Women’s Courtyard'' (Penguin, 2018). Her translation of

Krishna Sobti Krishna Sobti (18 February 1925 – 25 January 2019) was an Indian Hindi-language fiction writer and essayist. She won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1980 for her novel ''Zindaginama'' and in 1996, was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Fellowship, the ...

’s final novel, ''A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There'' (Penguin, 2019) is the first South Asian book to be awarded the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for a Translation of a Literary Work in 2020. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s ''Tomb of Sand'' ( Tilted Axis Press, 2021) was the first South Asian book to be shortlisted for the International Booker Prize; it went on to win the 2022 edition. Rockwell is also a writer, painter and artist. She has published a critical biography of Upendranath Ashk (2004, Penguin), and a novel titled ''Taste'' (Foxhead Books, 2014). In 2012, she published ''The Little Book of Terror'' (Foxhead Books), a volume of paintings and essays on the Global War on Terror. She also paints under the alias ''Lapata,'' which means "missing" or "disappeared" in Urdu.

References

External links

daisyrockwell.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rockwell, Daisy 1969 births Living people 21st-century American translators University of Chicago alumni Hindi–English translators Urdu–English translators Norman Rockwell