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Sankar Radhakrishnan

Thiruvananthapuram, March 10 HarperCollins India will launch its Hindi publishing programme in May this year. Harper Hindi, as the imprint is called, will publish Hindi translations of international bestsellers and also original works in Hindi. The first books in this imprint will be translations of Paulo Coelho’s The Witch of Portobello and C.S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.

“We want to build a list that combines the best of international writing, in translation, with exciting new writing by young writers writing in Hindi,” Ms Karthika V.K., Publisher and Chief Editor, HarperCollins Publishers India, told Business Line.

The first Hindi writer being published by HarperCollins is Ms Geetanjali Sree. The publisher is also working on a business plan to publish in other Indian languages as well, she added.

HarperCollins India, a joint venture between HarperCollins Publishers and the India Today Group, is also planning to launch the Collins imprint in India this year. “Collins internationally is a leading reference and illustrated books brand and we plan to extend its reach to India with locally published titles,” she said.

The first Indian Collins title — a trekking guide to the Northern Himalayas — will be published in the next few months.

To start with, the plan is to publish Collins titles only in English, Ms Karthika explained. The long term plan, though, is to do simultaneous printing in various Indian languages as well, she added.

Publishing translations from Indian languages into English is a very important part of HarperCollins’ publishing programme, she said. The publisher has launched an imprint called Harper Perennial that will offer modern classics in English and also in translation, she pointed out.

At the same time, the Perennial imprint will include new writing from Indian languages translated into English for the first time, she said. This will hopefully include both fiction and narrative non-fiction, she added.

In keeping with its objective to be “the home for the best new writing from the sub-continent” HarperCollins India plans to publish 75 titles in the coming fiscal. In English, it is focusing on new, young writing in fiction and is also commissioning non-fiction with “backlist” potential, she said.

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