Tilted Axis reprints 15,000 copies of International Booker-winner as sales jump 877%

Tilted Axis has reprinted 15,000 copies of this year’s International Booker Prize-winner, Tomb of Sand, written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell. 

The publisher said it was already looking at another reprint and sales were “going really well”. According to Nielsen BookScan’s UK Total Consumer Market, Tomb of Sand has sold 4,100 copies in total, and is the Small Publishers: Fiction number one. It saw a 877% jump week on week in volume after it was announced as the winner. 

Tomb of Sand is the first book originally written in any Indian language to win the prize and the first novel translated from Hindi to be recognised.    

It is set in northern India, and follows an 80-year-old woman who slips into a deep depression at the death of her husband, then resurfaces to gain a new lease of life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a hijra person – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more modern of the two.  

To her family’s consternation, she insists on travelling to Pakistan, simultaneously confronting the unresolved trauma of her teenage experiences of Partition, and re-evaluating what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman and a feminist. 

Kristen Alfaro, publisher at Tilted Axis, said she was "overwhelmed with joy" that "an incredible feat of literature" had been recognised, at last month’s award ceremony. She said the publisher was "really excited to bring new languages into translation" and emphasised the personal connection the press forges with its writers and translators.   

Accepting the prize, Shree said she was "amazed, delighted, honoured and humbled" to have won, noting: "The Booker will surely take it to many more people than it would have reached otherwise."