Penguin India announces The Yellow Metaphor, a landmark English translation of Assamese poet Jiban Narah, rendered with sensitivity and depth by Anindita Kar. Spanning more than thirty years (1990–2023), the collection gathers Narah’s most significant poems into a single volume, opening a vital window into the literary imagination of North-East India.

Rooted in Mising and Assamese life, Narah’s poetry emerges from landscapes shaped by rivers, floods, folklore, and lived history. The Brahmaputra is not merely a setting here but a living force—shaping memory, myth, politics, desire, and survival. Running through the book is the recurring image of yellow—mustard fields, watchful eyes, working skin—at once luminous and unsettling, a way of seeing the world at its brightest and most fragile.

Born in a village along the Brahmaputra, Narah writes from a region often described as India’s “eastern edge,” yet his poems resist marginality. Drawing on folk beliefs, indigenous culture, and collective memory, The Yellow Metaphor positions Assam and the North-East not as subjects to be explained, but as sources of literary power.

For English readers, this collection offers a rare encounter with the vibrancy of contemporary North-East Indian poetry—faithfully translated while preserving linguistic texture and cultural depth.

Why this book matters

• A major Assamese voice in English: Thirty years of Jiban Narah’s poetry, translated for the first time in a single volume.
• Poetry as cultural passage: Anindita Kar’s translation retains indigenous imagery and rhythm, keeping Assamese and Mising worlds alive on the page.
• A river as literary anchor: The Brahmaputra shapes a poetic geography that redefines how regional voices enter global literature.
• Land, identity, and belonging: Memory, desire, grief, and inheritance flow through every poem.

Praise

“Here is a poet from North-east India, ploughing the Mising–Assamese traditions, and sowing a rainbow of poems. Nobody has defined colours like him.” — Gulzar

About the author
Jiban Narah is a poet, novelist, and teacher, widely regarded as one of Assam’s most original literary voices. His work has been translated into several Indian languages; earlier English collections include The Orange Hill and The Buddha and Other Poems.

About the translator
Anindita Kar translates Assamese and Bengali literature into English, bringing contemporary voices from India’s North-East to a wider readership with care for linguistic nuance and cultural context.

The Yellow Metaphor is both a landmark translation and a living archive—carrying the rhythms of river life, the weight of history, and the brightness of imagination, flowing onward like the Brahmaputra itself.