The following text is from Anita Desai’s 2011 novella Translator Translated. While working on her translation of a novel written in Odia (a language of India) into English, the narrator looks out her window at night to clear her mind.

I tried to distract myself with these sights of the ordinary world, but in my mind it was the lines I had been translating and the lines that I had been writing that remained in the forefront. I longed for sleep to obliterate them but it eluded me. Perhaps everything would be normal again once I had sent off the manuscript, I thought, and looked forward to completing the work.

©2011 by Anita Desai