Sana R. Chaudhry wins for her English translation of Fahmida Riaz’s novel
Qila-e-Faramoshi or Fortress of the Forgotten Ones

June 10, 2024

The Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation is thrilled to announce the winner of its second annual prize: Sana R. Chaudhry, for her translation from Urdu of Pakistani writer Fahmida Riaz’s final novel, Qila-e-Faramoshi or Fortress of the Forgotten Ones.

As part of the prize, Chaudhry’s translation of the novel will be published by Open Letter Books in fall 2025. Jury chair and co-director of the University of Chicago’s South Asian Literature in Translation Project Jason Grunebaum said of the work:

Pakistani feminist icon Fahmida Riaz's final novel excavates socialist revolution in the time of fire worship, and transports us to a realm of Parsi kings and buckling hierarchies both new and shockingly familiar. Sana R. Chaudhry's translation dazzles with its meticulous language that creates a polyphonic space for the recovery of a people and their memory.

Sana R. Chaudhry is a researcher, writer, translator, and educator. She specializes in literatures of the body, trauma, witnessing, and silence. Her monograph Experiments in Silence: The Urdu Short Story after 1947 is forthcoming from Clemson University Press in Spring 2025.

The author, the late Fahmida Riaz, wrote more than 15 books of fiction and poetry. She fled political persecution in Pakistan under General Zia-ul-Haq and spent seven years living in India, where she ultimately gained asylum. She had a varied career as a journalist and broadcaster working for Radio Pakistan and other outlets, and wrote in Persian, Sindhi, Urdu and English.

Launched in July 2022, the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation is an annual effort to remedy the stark disparities in literary translation worldwide and support compelling storytellers from the Indian Subcontinent by raising their visibility in the US. The groundbreaking prize, sponsored by Armory Square Ventures, is the first of its kind worldwide. Of the nearly 7,600 books published in translation in the United States over the past decade, only 64, or fewer than 1%, originated from a South Asian language, even though these languages are spoken by a full one-fifth of the world’s population. This year, the prize’s focus was on works by women authors, and shortlisted entries were originally published in Assamese, Bangla, Hindi, Urdu, and Angika.

The inaugural prize winner, Musharraf Ali Farooqi’s translation of Siddique Alam’s The Kettledrum and Other Stories, is forthcoming from Open Letter Books in fall 2024.

For more, see “5 Things to Know About the Armory Square Prize Shortlist,” a reference guide to all the works, authors and translators the Armory Square jury shortlisted in May 2024.

About Armory Square Ventures in Skaneateles, New York

Armory Square Ventures (ASV) is a diverse, mission-focused technology venture capital firm that operates across all of New York State. With offices in the Finger Lakes, Indianapolis and New York City, ASV arose out of the desire to seed opportunities and jobs for those based in the Upstate New York region and beyond. As such, we are an optimism engine and community catalyst for ecosystems outside of Silicon Valley, supporting B2B and tech-enabled software startups to source talent, resources and capital. Our focus lies in places overlooked by other investors. For more about the prize, winner or finalists, contact Shreyas Shende at shreyas@armorysv.com

About Open Letter Books in Rochester, New York

Open Letter—the University of Rochester's nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year and running an online literary website called Three Percent, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow. For more about Open Letter Books, contact Chad Post at chad.post@rochester.edu