‘A child’s innocent echo’: Writer Mohsin Khan on his novel ‘Allah Miyan’s Workshop’
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Seen through the eyes of a young boy named Gibran and set in the Avadh region of Uttar Pradesh, Allah Miyan’s Workshop explores faith, poverty, loss, and a child’s sense of wonder. Originally written in Urdu by Mohsin Khan, the novel won the inaugural Bank of Baroda Rashtrabhasha Samman for its Hindi translation before appearing in English in Maaz Bin Bilal’s translation. In this conversation, Khan and Bilal discuss the book’s journey across languages, the difficulty of preserving a child’s voice, and what is gained and inevitably changed when a story moves from one language to another.
Excerpts from the conversation:
The English title cannot entirely reproduce the meanings and associations carried by the Urdu title Allah Miyan Ka Karkhana. What was the rationale for choosing Allah Miyan’s Workshop as the English title? And how do you think an English-language reader, unfamiliar with the cultural context of the original phrase, is likely to interpret it?
Mohsin Khan (MK): The title Allah Miyan Ka Karkhana carries a certain breadth, depth of meaning, and cultural colour that is not easy to carry over fully into another language. It represents the creative and intellectual world of the novel well, and it also played an important part in drawing the attention of Urdu readers.
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