The WORDSMITH By Dhruba Jyoti Borah

Dhruba Jyoti Borah is one of the foremost voices in contemporary Assamese literature, a novelist, scholar and former president of the Asom Sahitya Sabha whose work spans fiction, history and social commentary. His 2007 novel Kotha Ratnakar won the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009, establishing it as an important work of modern Assamese literature. Now translated into English as The Wordsmith, Borah’s acclaimed novel comes to a wider readership in a translation that opens up one of Assam’s most powerful literary voices and one of its most compelling stories of caste, society and human transformation.

At the centre of The Wordsmith is Moyna of Joharkhat, a young man from an oppressed Dalit community whose life is shaped by poverty, prejudice and social exclusion. Ostracized and pushed towards a life of crime, Moyna leads a double existence, cultivating paddy by day and stealing by night. But this is ultimately not a story about crime; it is a story about the forces that create it, and about whether a person can reclaim his life after being denied dignity and belonging. A sweeping modern bildungsroman about caste, marginalisation, survival and redemption, The Wordsmith asks what it takes for someone to become the author of his own life.