One of the foremost Punjab novelist of our time , Delip Kaur Tiwana is also a distinguished academic , retired as Professor and chair, department of Punjabi , Punjabi University, Patiala, where she is currently a life-fellowship and writer- in-residence.
The novel tell The Tale, Urvashi was published in Punjabi in 1999 as Katha kaho Urvashi. It won the Prestigious Saraswati samman (Delhi , 2001) and was well received Within and outside of Academia . Prior to the novel , Dalip Kaur Tiwana Published seven collection s of short stories , twenty – one novels , besides tow Sahitya Akademi award (Delhi, 1972), the Vagdevi award (Calcutta , 1998), and the anjanagudu Thirumalamba National award (Karnataka, 1994).
After Urvashi, Tiwan has continued to write and receive honours . If we consider only her creative writings, she has published forty novels to date. for her contribution to the World of Indian literature , she the Padma Shri from the president of India in 2004 and the little of Punjabi Sahit Rattan, the Jewel of Punjabi Literature, from the Punjab Government in 2008.
Why the desire and endeavours of women to achieve a life of dignity , equality and freedom , at home or in society at large, are repeatedly frustrated from the recurrent problematics of Tiwan’s fiction. She has looked at this vexing question in several contexts and from varied perspective , an her presidents engagement with the dialectics of domestics and social life may well be described as her ‘ experiments with truth.’.
Tell the tale , Urvashi has a distinct accent as well as a formal and thematic complexity that resists easy pigeonholing . Nonetheless, it does not fall outside the author ‘s enduring concerns. Interweaving autobiography , family history , fiction and fantasy , Urvashi is the tragic intergenerational saga of a landed family in Punjab . written in the Malawai dialect of Punjabi , its languages I s a marvel of economy and elegance.
The translation of six hundred and fifty densely written pages was not easy and it has naturally taken long to complete . If there is any merit in the translation, it is due chiefly to the perseverance, hard work and amazing linguistic competences of the editor , Professor Elizabeth Siler. for the amount of work she has put in, I would regard her as a co-translator of the rather than only as the editor of the English translation.
Professor Siler and I have received full cooperation in our work from the author, for Which we are deeply grateful. The translation has her complete approval. I offer the novel to the English reader to read and judge.
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