Gulabiya: A Novel

A finalist for the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation. A searing, deeply rooted tale of love, labour, and resistance from the hot floodplains of the Kosi River — now available in English for the first time.

On the hot floodplains of the Kosi River, Gulabiya is a young farmhand in love with Balesar, the manager of a nearby farm's fieldhands. When Balesar decides to till his own land, he is joined in this enterprise by his Gulabo. Their dreams — most moderate, most ordinary — attract the wrath of Balesar's landlord.

Gulabiya is betrayed by her own family, leading to a heartbreaking separation from her lover. Meanwhile, the village's wealthy power brokers scheme to sabotage Balesar's success. The powerful believe they have suppressed yet another attempt at resistance — but they couldn't be more wrong.

Gulabiya is a story that shocked and scandalised readers when it was first published in 2008. Now, in this new English translation by Shivangi Rawal and Tejaswi Rawal, it reaches readers around the world — a tale that breaks open the realities of farm labour, caste, and life in twenty-first-century India.

Acclaim

• Finalist for the 2024 Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation
• An extract appeared in Words Without Borders in 2025
• A landmark translation from Angika and Hindi into English

About the author

Dr Abha Purbey is a scholar and linguistic activist working primarily in Angika and Hindi. Her writing centres the lives, language, and labour of rural India, and her work has brought literary attention to Angika — a minority language of the Bihar-Jharkhand region with a deep oral and literary tradition.

About the translators

Shivangi Rawal and Tejaswi Rawal are literary translators working between English, Hindi, and Angika. Their translation of Gulabiya was named a finalist for the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation in 2024 — one of the most prestigious recognitions for emerging translators of South Asian literature.

Perfect for readers of

Phanishwarnath Renu's Maila Anchal, Perumal Murugan, Geetanjali Shree's Tomb of Sand, Premchand, and anyone drawn to literature in translation that gives voice to rural India.