Known for negotiating new spaces in children's literature in translation especially, Katha has been nominated six times for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2017, sometimes dubbed as the "Nobel Prize in Literature." Today it is a leading name for translations in Indian publishing, and produces stories from contemporary India, unusual Indian folklore and unsung mythology, translated into English and Hindi from 21 regional Indian languages. Katha is "exclusively devoted to translating regional Indian writers into English."
Books for Adults: Nearly 200 Katha books for adults including translations in 21 Indian languages have been published.
Katha Prize Stories: Written for adults, the stories present a stunning, often electrifying, perspective on the plurality of experiences that is India.
Books for Children Nearly 122 books recommended by NCERT and CBSE.
Reviews
"Katha is literally a literary institution. It’s a non-profit making society devoted to “enhancing the pleasures of reading.” Every year it publishes in English a collection of short stories originally written in various Indian languages. This year, women and children come first, stories with adult males as the central characters are in a minority … " Gillian Wright writes in praise of Katha Prize Stories Volume Four. Naiyer Masud, eminent critic, says after reading Katha's translation, " done. "Katha has brought the English-reading audience closer to regional language literature. One hopes this will eventually make international readers too focus on Indian literature beyond Indo-Anglian writing." Sharad Chandra, writes in the Hindu, "While going through the book, it is hard not to be impressed not only by the stories it contains, but also by the method of their selection, presentation and production. Put together more or less in the manner of Pushcart Prize Stories, Katha Prize Stories 3 offers to English language readers, some of the bestshort fiction written in regional Indian languages. With a truly pan-Indian perspective, it makes the writers in the country’s many different regions and languages aware of each other’s works and of the problems and themes currently engaging their attention. Its selections for the yearly edition being strictly restricted to the stories published during the previous year, Katha Prize Stories has established itself in a surprisingly short period of three years as an anxiously awaited yearly event watched alike by discerning readers in India and abroad, as well as by writers, translators, and literary journals. Because of the care for quality, it has already become a matter of prestige for writers, translators, nominators, journals to find their names included in that year’s Katha collection."
Katha Awards
Initiated in 1990, these awards have gone a long way in promoting the best of fiction in Indian literature. and has "firmly put translation onto the Indian publishing agenda with the 'Katha Prize' Stories series". Also known as Katha Award for Creative Fiction, stories written in the regional languages, including Bangla, English, Konkani, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, and English are considered, given in 30 categories in all, and the highest award, the 'Katha Chudamani Award' given for lifetime literary achievement to writers of exceptional merit, honours the writer with a citation, a cash award and with publication in English of their significant works. They are the A K Ramanujan Award, Kathakari Award and the Kathavachak Award. Thirteen volumes of Katha Prize Stories have been published so far. The award are also marked by the week-long 'Katha Utsav', where story-tellers from many parts of the world take part
