Witnesses of Remembrance

Kunwar Narain (1927–2017) is considered one of India’s foremost poets, thinkers and literary figures of modern times. He read widely across disciplines and literatures, and blended an international sensibility with a grounding in Indian history and thought. He has written in diverse genres, including three epic poems, eight poetry collections, translations of world poetry, and books of short stories, criticism, essays, diaries, conversations, and writings on world cinema and the arts. His oeuvre of seven decades, since his first book in 1956, evolved continuously and embodies, above all, a unique interplay of the simple and the complex. After over five decades in Lucknow, where a significant part of his writing was done, he moved to Delhi. His honours include the Sahitya Akademi award and Senior Fellowship; Kabir Samman; Kumaran Asan award; medal of Warsaw University; Italy’s Premio Feronia for distinguished world author; the civilian honour Padma Bhushan; and India’s highest literary award, the Jnanpith. Some of his works remain unpublished.
Apurva Narain is Kunwar Narain’s son and translator. His books include a collection of poetry translations, No Other World, and a co-translated collection of short stories, The Play of Dolls. His work has appeared in several literary journals over the years. Educated in India and at the University of Cambridge, he writes in English, consults in the field of international development, and has professional interests in ecology, public health and ethics.

A new selection of far-reaching poems from an outstanding literary doyen of our times.

Kunwar Narain is widely regarded as one of India’s finest contemporary poets and thinkers, with a universal appeal. Awarded with the Jnanpith, his work bears witness to how the lived and the written coalesce. His poems say more than their words—taking us into and out of the morass of our bizarre worlds, signalling inner disquiets in their solicitudes, waking us up to hope in the interstices between lines, and creating entire worldviews in their collectivity.

This is the first book-length translation of the author’s poetry to appear after his passing away in 2017. It has an eclectic, wide-ranging selection of poems from his latest five collections. This bilingual edition is also substantive, with over a hundred poems—translated and introduced by Apurva Narain, who has spent years with his father’s poems. Among the most accomplished translators of Hindi poetry into English today, he brings here a compelling level of precision and evocation that Kunwar Narain’s poems demand—slowly expansive as they are in their visionary insights, tender intimations, austere surfaces and silent remembrances; conversing with their readers and urging them to re-read. and is among the most accomplished translators of Hindi poetry into English today.