To read Uday Prakash is to witness profound displacement. It’s not the displacement of a bride and groom migrating from India to the west and negotiating unfamiliar food, or of middle-class youth railing against their elders’ bewildering and intransigent attitudes toward love and marriage. It’s a displacement unleashed by forces both imported and indigenous in the India of today—global, hungry, late-stage capitalism steeped in centuries-old caste oppression—and inscribed on the likes of sweepers, weavers, semi-retired judges, typesetters, servants returned from the dead, sick slum kids, and others unable, or unwilling, to fall in line. Prakash narrates his urgent tales of endangered, recalcitrant beings with attention to both inner lives and external forces in a manner that at once loves and seethes. His gifts as a writer also include permitting himself to meander within the narrative, and to reveal his authorial hand, baldly and unapologetically. This creates additional layers of displacement, and ones that enhance a singular storytelling voice comprised of disjointed, circuitous lives. His gift to the reader amid these dark portraits is an unexpected, wry humor that provides needed perspective and levity. An English reader of Prakash’s stories may wonder where he or she is in the first place. A Hindi reader may remember times of dizzying change, triggering feelings of displacement that once were and continue to be. But both readers will be eager to follow the voice of Uday Prakash wherever he wishes to take them.

I first read Uday Prakash in the stacks of Butler Library at Columbia some ten years ago when I pulled down a copy of his short-story collection Tirich from the shelves and began reading the story “Paul Gomra and his Motor Scooter.” From the very first paragraph describing an aging, bulging, lowly newspaperman who changes his name and decides to become a Hindi poet, I knew I had found who I was looking for: a contemporary Hindi writer whose work was of today, whose voice spoke to me, and who I deeply wanted to translate. A mutual friend provided me with his email address, and I wrote to him with a sample of my version of the story. He was receptive and encouraging of my efforts, and we met in person nearly two years later—my trip enabled by a PEN/Heim translation grant to work on my translation of his novel The Girl with the Golden Parasol (Yale University Press). His other words available in English include The Walls of Delhi (Seven Stories Press), which I also translated, and Rage, Revelry, and Romance (Srishti) and Short Shorts Long Shots (Katha Press), translated by Robert Hueckstedt. On that first trip we both stayed in his home near Delhi and traveled to his village in Sitapur, Madhya Pradesh, and since then we have visited each other many times in India, New York, Chicago, and California.

We conducted the following interview in English and over several months: I emailed Uday a list of questions, and he picked a few to answer. — Jason Grunebaum