Rahul Soni for Shrikant Verma's Magadh
Friday 31st October
Topping & Company Booksellers of Edinburgh, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
6.30pm
7pm
We are absolutely thrilled to welcome writer, editor and translator Rahul Soni for his translation of Shrikant Verma's (1931–1986) masterpiece Magadh.
Magadh was first published in Hindi in 1984 and is widely regarded as one of the most important works of modern Indian poetry. A chorus of narrators – commoners, statesmen, nameless wanderers – pieces together the histories of ancient cities and kingdoms on the Indian subcontinent, their rise to splendour, their decline and eventual fall. In poems that are stark and urgent yet arch and richly allusive, Verma lays bare their tales of corruption, guilt, ignorance and arrogance.
Rahul Soni's landmark translation stays faithful to the spare, haunting, incantatory cadences of the original, revealing how startlingly prescient and relevant Magadh remains today.