Last December, on the sidelines of Bookaroo’s Baroda edition, when this writer caught up with Arefa Tehsin, children’s book author, she was particularly thrilled about the news that her recent work of fiction for grown-ups, The Witch in the Peepul Tree (HarperCollins) was going to be translated into Sinhala. This fiction title will be translated by DN Dickwella, who is an author of fiction and non-fiction, a political analyst and a specialist in geopolitics. As a publication of Subavi Publishers — an award-winning publishing house that specialises in translations in Sri Lanka — Tehsin’s work will now reach Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese readers.

The part-period, part-mystery novel set in 1950s Udaipur, is centred on a murder around Makar Sankranti in 1950, and follows the events that happen with a zamindar, a middleman, a Bohra Muslim widow, a Bhil tribal, an attractive, untouchable teenager and a police inspector.