It’s a breakthrough moment for a language long left out of the global literary conversation.
By Iqbal Bhat
It’s not often a novel written in Kashmiri reaches the global stage. But on June 16, that changed. At the Himal Southasian Fiction Fest, a big announcement was made. The 1975 novel To Each Their Own Hell by Akhtar Mohiuddin won a top prize. It was translated into English by Mehdi Khawaja.
The prize, only in its third year, honours translations that bring lesser-heard voices from South Asia to English-speaking readers. This is the first time it has gone to a work written in Kashmiri, and, likely, the first time a Kashmiri novel will be published in English in the United States. For a language as rich in literature as Kashmiri, and as historically ignored by global publishing, the moment is seismic.
“This book is a taut, compelling meditation on love, and its absence,” said Daisy Rockwell, a juror. “In Mehdi Khwaja’s compelling translation, the propulsive voice of the narrative immediately grabs the reader’s attention and won’t let go.”
Rockwell, an International Booker–winning translator, compared Mohiuddin’s novel to Sartre’s No Exit and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, with the pacing of a dark thriller. Written nearly fifty years ago, Akhtar Mohiuddin’s novel is a deep and unsettling story about emptiness and longing. The characters—X, Sheen, Daisy, Nancy—move through a strange, blurry world where nothing feels real. Not much happens in the plot, but the feeling it leaves stays with you.
Khawaja’s translation brings that strange, heavy mood to life with simple, powerful writing. He’s a freelance journalist and editor, and he’s also taught Kashmiri literature at Ashoka University.
Born in 1928, Akhtar Mohiuddin is a towering literary figure of Kashmir. He wrote the first novel in the language—Dod Dag, or Disease and Pain—and in 1968 was awarded the Padma Shri, one of India’s highest civilian honours.
But in 1984, he returned the award in protest after the hanging of Kashmiri separatist leader Maqbool Bhat. He died in 2001. Many of his works remain unpublished, locked in drawers and family archives.
Khawaja’s translation might be the first to break that lock….
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After the truth-shower 