French version of Kocharethi soon

MANANTHAVADY: He is probably the first tribal writer from India to make his presence felt in the mainstream literature with his path-breaking Malayalam novel Kocharethi, published in 1998.
The debut novel of Narayan, which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi award, is all set to be translated into French soon. The novel is being translated as part of a cultural exchange programme of the central government with France.
"It is a great honour for me as a writer that Kocharethi is being translated into French. In a recent communication, the authorities said that they have selected 20 Indian novels and this one is the fourth in the list and the translation work is expected very soon," he said.
The novel has already been published in all the south Indian languages apart from Hindi and English and the new translation in French is expected to give the voice of the tribal writer a new recognition.
"With the English translation published by OUP, the novel got a wide readership in many foreign countries including Canada," said Narayan.
The governments should make efforts to bring the tribal people to the mainstream without compromising on their ethnic identity, he said.
"No one can write the experience of an adivasi better than an adivasi writer. It was my experience as a human being born in the Mala Araya community which gave me the strength to write this," said a proud Narayan.
Though there are many tribes who have a treasure of experience with them, most of them cannot translate their experience into words because they don't know to write, as they follow an oral tradition, he said. "However, with many young tribal people who can read and write, I expect new writers from the tribal communities of Kerala," he said.
"In my knowledge Kocharethi is the first novel by an adivasi in India, but I was not given that credit when it was published because someone raised doubt about it saying that a novel was published by a tribal writer in Assam some years back, but I have not heard of any such work," says Narayan."I don't want to be the first! Because if there are people from any tribal community who wrote before me, that is a credit for the tribals, because in many parts of the world, great novels and fictions are written by the tribes, and India also has that strength provided the tribal folks learn how to write," he added.