It’s Halloween next week. The neighborhoods are decorated with black cats, ghosts, and after dark everything is slightly more sinister. That spooky effect doesn’t end at suburban yards or city stoops, but it’s found its way inside and is terrorizing bookshelves, too. As proof, we’re sharing some of the spookiest parts from our first Young Adult novel, The Wild Book! And to share our Halloween spirit, we’re offering readers a special chance to win an advance copy of The Wild Book!
Read MoreSee Sonali Zohra's Gorgeous Images from the New, Illustrated Ramayana
in Artwork, Books, Young Readers
When we read Arshia Sattar's gripping retelling of the classic Hindu epic Ramayana, we were blown away. Arshia takes an incredibly dramatic story—an army of flying monkeys, an evil demon king, a beautiful princess in distress, a hero who discovers his own secret powers—and brings it vividly to life in lucid, artful, and propulsive prose that honors the original ancient text by the Sanskrit poet Valmiki. Making the book even more vidid are artist Sonali Zohra's stunning illustrations: twenty two-page spreads in bright color, sharp detail, and astonishingly original conception. See the gallery below for a preview the images, which will be even more gorgeous in the finished, hardcover book—out March 2018 from Yonder!
Gallery: Sonali Zohra's Illustrations from Ramayana
Sonali Zohra: Artist's Statement
Growing up in India, not knowing the story of the Ramayana or at least a general outline of what it is about is unlikely. It is India’s great archetypal story, one that shows up everywhere. It is in the fabric of our culture and has been presented in a variety of styles and mediums—be it architecture, painting, illustration or sculpture—over the span of two thousand years.
The opportunity to illustrate the Ramayana, particularly this version translated and rewritten by Arshia Sattar from Valmiki’s original, was something out of a dream. As a child I was fascinated by indigenous folk artist Badri Narayan’s illustrations of the Mahabharata written by Shanta Rameshwar Rao. The illustrations portrayed the gods and goddesses in an almost human form—and, in my eyes, a more relatable form compared to the popular religious depictions of the characters. This seemed to fit Arshia’s style of writing: mystical yet so relatable. Inspired by the text, I began drafting my visions of this great story.
I wanted the illustrations to be dark and detailed silhouettes against bold colours in the hope of translating the mood and tone of Arshia’s descriptions. As an artist, the process is sometimes greater than the end goal. This process was almost meditative—it brought me closer to understanding the intricacies of the scenarios within the story and opened up a whole new way of setting the scene for the text to follow.
—Sonali Zohra
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Photo by João Silas on Unsplash
Celebrate International Translation Day with a Venta / Sölu / מְכִירָה / Продажа!
in Translation, Books, Sales
This International Translation Day, we'd like to toast the intrepid translators who navigate between languages to bring us the richness of the world's cultures. These extraordinary linguistic artists have brought us compelling, eye-opening stories from Cuba, Hungary, Iceland, Brazil, Iran, Israel, Mexico, Madagascar, Russia, Albania, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere.
Without Alfred MacAdam, we wouldn't have the sensorial firehose of the novels of the polymathic Chilean filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky; without Alison Entrekin, we wouldn't enjoy the deliciously brutal feminist takedown of macho culture that is Fernanda Torres's The End. We not only #ReadBannedBooks, but we translate them too, with the help of champions of free expression such as Will Evans—a publisher of books in translation himself—who brought us the book Oleg Kashin got beaten by Putin's thugs for writing; and Carol Ermakova, who brought us exiled Uzbek author Hamid Ismailov's dive into the literal underbelly of Moscow in The Underground. We celebrate classic translations too, such as John Ormsby's foundational rendering of Cervantes's masterpiece Don Quixote—a book we got so excited about publishing that we translated the first chapter into languages from Hebrew to Zapotec.
To celebrate our community of translators, we're giving our readers a 25% discount off any of our translated books through the weekend when you buy directly from the Restless website and use the discount code TRANSLATIONDAY at checkout. Scroll through the gallery below to see what's on offer!
By Arshia Sattar
Illustrations by Sonali Zohra
Yonder: Restless Books for Young Readers
One of the world’s oldest and best-loved tales, now retold and illustrated in thrilling detail for readers of all ages.
Hardcover • ISBN: 9781632061775
Publication date: May 8, 2018