Nectar in a Sieve: Rediscovering Kamala Markandaya | Kim Oliver, Alastair Niven, Namita Gokhale

Nectar in a Sieve: Rediscovering Kamala Markandaya | Kim Oliver, Alastair Niven and Namita Gokhale in conversation with Mohini Gupta

Novelist and journalist Kamala Markandaya is celebrated as one of India’s earliest writers in English. Her novels, written in London, where she spent her life as a writer, have been widely acclaimed and celebrated during her lifetime, and continue to be relevant and pivotal. Her earliest novel, Nectar in a Sieve, is a tragic tale of fortitude and courage, where India’s farmers fight poverty and disaster. Her other novels The Coffer Dams and The Nowhere Man have also been recently republished by HopeRoad Publishing, in an effort by her daughter, Kim Oliver, to preserve and proliferate her momentous legacy. Together with Oliver, literary scholar and author Alastair Niven, writer and festival director Namita Gokhale and translator Mohini Gupta, discuss Markandaya’s continuing relevance and relatability.

Presented by Rothschild Foundation

Kim Oliver is the daughter of Kamala Markandaya (1924-2004), the Indian novelist. She was born in London and grew up there with her Indian mother and English father. She recollects her mother’s writing years - the 1960s and 1970s – during her own childhood and teenage years - while looking after her home and family.

Alastair Niven LVO OBE taught at the Universities of Ghana, Leeds and Stirling, before becoming Director General of the Africa Centre. He headed the Literature department of the Arts Council of Great Britain, that later devolved into Arts Council England, and later of the British Council. He was President of English PEN from 2003 to 2007 and has twice been a judge of the Booker Prize. He is an Honorary Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford, and also an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, which in 2021 bestowed on him its highest award, the Benson Medal. He has written two books on D.H.Lawrence and been published widely as a commentator on Indian and post-colonial writing.

Namita Gokhale is the author of twenty-one books including eleven works of fiction, and editor of numerous anthologies. Her acclaimed debut novel, Paro: Dreams of Passion, was published in 1984. Her recent works of fiction include The Blind Matriarch and the play-script Betrayed By Hope. The edited anthology Mystics and Sceptics - Searching Himalayan.
Masters was published in 2023. Gokhale is Co-founder and Co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival. She has been recognised both for her writing and her commitment to multilingual Indian literature and cross-cultural literary dialogue. She received the prestigious First Centenary National Award for Literature in 2017, and was a Sahitya Akademi awardee for 2021. She has recently been honoured with the Nilimarani Sahitya Samman 2023.

Mohini Gupta is a DPhil Candidate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford. She has been the Charles Wallace India Trust Translator-Writer Fellow in 2017. She has co-edited The Hindu Bard: The Poetry of Dorothy Bonarjee (Honno Press, 2023) and the forthcoming Rethinking Education in the Context of Post-Pandemic South Asia: Challenges and Possibilities (Routledge, 2023). An alumna of SOAS University of London, she has been a Research Fellow at Sarai, CSDS; and a translator-in-residence at the Sangam House international writers’ residency in Bangalore. She has written on languages, literature and translation for publications such as The Caravan Magazine, Huffington Post, TheWire.in, Scroll.in and the WorldKidLit Blog.