India, June 29 -- Akhtar Mohiuddin's Jahanmuk Panun Panun Naar (To Each Their Own Hell) was written in 1975. But it was properly published only in 2002, a year after Mohiuddin's death, and has never been formally translated. Your work-in-progress translation of the novel won the Armory Square Prize for South Asian Literature in Translation last year and is slated to be published next year. How did you decide to translate it?

Most of Kashmiri literature remains not only untranslated, but also vastly under read - even by Kashmiris themselves because many Kashmiris can't read the script. The language was introduced in schools fairly recently. In fact, when I was in school, it wasn't there. So, I didn't learn the language in school. I had to...