Translation, space and body in The Hour Before Dawn

This paper analyses The Hour Before Dawn (2015), which is Maitreyee Chakravarty’s English translation of the Assamese novel Antoreep written by Bhabendranath Saikia through the theoretical framework of translation studies, spatial studies and feminist criticism. Situating the text within the centre-periphery tussle and translations from Northeast India, the paper argues that translation goes beyond the linguistic transfer and reorganises cultural geographies. Drawing on Andre Lefebvere’s notion of translation as rewriting and Susan Bassnett’s emphasis on the ideological embeddedness of translation, the study foregrounds how the movement from a regional language to a globally dominant one is conditioned by asymmetrical power relations, publishing economies, and representational expectations. The translator’s preface is read as a paratextual “threshold space” (Genette), revealing the paradox of retaining “regional flavour” while seeking global readability. A close reading of the text is made to analyse silence, sexuality and the body. A reading of fragile masculinity is made through the critical lens of R.W Connell. The silence of the protagonist is studied through Spivak’s concept of “strategic opacity” while intersecting it with a study of physical and metaphorical spatiality using Foucault’s notion of heterotopias and Doreen Massey’s relational understanding of space. The study argues for understanding translated regional texts as critical sites where power, resistance, and subjectivity are continually reconfigured rather than as transparent cultural artifacts.