About 25 years ago, translator and professor Dr Jayant Dhupkar undertook the task of penning down by hand the translation of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, one of the most influential pieces of French literature of all time, into his native tongue Marathi. The aim was to make global literature available and accessible to a country like India that was characterised by diversity of culture and language. “World classics need to be studied in detail and brought to the people, because there are people who want to read about it, and there are those who wish to read the direct translations to develop their own thinking and perspectives of the stories,” says Dhupkar. 

French novelist Gustave Flaubert is the author of Madame Bovary