Shikasta Jamhooriat — an Urdu translation of a collection of Arundhati Roy’s essays, Broken Republic — by Asif Farrukhi was launched at The Silent Reed on Monday.

The event was a casual get-together of book lovers and socially motivated individuals.

On the issue of how difficult it was to translate Roy’s work, Farrukhi said it was improbable to recapture her style, but the relevance and urgency of the topic of the book were such that he found it imperative to translate it into Urdu. He said translating Roy was a complicated undertaking because not even an English writer could match the way she experimented with the English language and the manner with which she employed English phrases and idioms. However, he said, since them subject of the essays was related to the masses, it was important to present it in the language that they (masses) understood.

See: Dawn.com