Review: 'Tomb of Sand,' by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell

For the first 400 pages of Geetanjali Shree's epic novel "Tomb of Sand," winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize and translated by Daisy Rockwell from Hindi, our animated unnamed narrator leads readers on a kind of scavenger hunt. We are regaled with tales about the family of Ma, an 80-year-old matriarch living in northern India whose grief from the recent loss of her husband leaves her bedridden in her son Bade's bungalow.

Facing the wall, Ma lies in a samadhi, which Shree defines as a deeply meditative state, self-immolation by entombment, or a place of entombment. (The book's Hindi title is "Ret Samadhi," ret meaning sand.)

As Ma appears to slip into the wall's cracks, her family grows increasingly desperate. Bade huffs and puffs and directs his frustration toward everyone else in the household. His Reebok-wearing wife, Bahu, receives advice about how to care for Ma from their odd adult child, Overseas Son, who phones frequently from Australia.

Sid, their other son and Ma's favorite grandchild, strums tunes on his guitar. Meanwhile Ma's daughter Beti, a woman's rights activist, tries to coax her mother back onto her feet. Unbeknownst to them all, Ma is not in a state of decline. She is a cocooned caterpillar in the midst of a metamorphosis and on the verge of rebirth.

When Overseas Son gifts his grandmother a golden cane with butterflies, Ma begins to give away most of her worldly possessions, and then briefly disappears. Upon her return, she moves in with Beti, busies herself with gardening, and deepens her friendship with Rosie Bua, a local hijra and entrepreneur, who knows and understands Ma in a way that perplexes her own children. (The word hijra has no direct translation in English, but refers to a third gender; their identity is rooted in Hinduism. They live in a community, study with a guru, and confer blessings on other Hindus.)

"Tomb of Sand" is an engrossing fable about an octogenarian's liberation from her decades-long roles as wife and mother, and her pursuit of a past life she has largely kept secret from her family. Ma's quest is rooted in the 1947 Partition of the subcontinent, the dawn of two nations, India and Pakistan, and the border between them that incites widespread communal violence and rips loved ones apart. "Once you've got women and a border," the novel opens, "the story can write itself."

Shree scrupulously examines the demarcation between life and death, mother and daughter, past and present, and how grief and memory, when harnessed, have the power to cultivate long lost connections. The narrator's witty observations and lengthy humorous asides (we learn Overseas Son is incapable of laughter) add to the breadth and depth of this rich novel.

We are reminded throughout "Tomb of Sand" that not every question has an answer, not every mystery has a resolution. "The truth of the matter is this: that not all its facets are revealed at once. Some will never be known." But for the reader who wades in Shree's luminous prose, the book's threads braid into a single, vivid tapestry.

Anjali Enjeti is the Atlanta-based author of "Southbound: Identity, Inheritance, and Social Change" and "The Parted Earth."

Tomb of Sand

By: Geetanjali Shree, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell.

Publisher: HarperVia, 624 pages, $29.99.