A dazzling postcolonial inversion of Heart of Darkness set during the Great Indian Famine of 1878 that recounts its devastating cost to both life and human dignity.It is 1878, and Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer in Madrasapatnam, loyal servant to the crown and Queen Victoria, knows that there is no danger that he ought to fear in this heatblasted and famine-devastated land.But when he discovers two laborers from Tudor Ice Company being brutall...

Raw, tender, and darkly comic, The Abyss is widely considered a masterpiece from Jeyamohan, a writer whose body of work has shaped modern Tamil literature.Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful, God-fearing man about town: he has a loyal wife, three daughters, and money to pay for their dowries. However, it’s an open secret that his success is fueled by a trade that is as profitable as it is cruel: he owns—and breeds—a group of physically deformed beg...

"Jeyamohan is one of India's most resourceful makers of literary art" PANKAJ MISHRAOur understanding of contemporary India is incomplete without reading Jeyamohan" VIVEK SHANBHAG, author of Ghachar GhocharThe year is 1878 and the south of India is in the grip of a devastating famine.Aiden Byrne, an Irish police officer and loyal servant to the Crown, encounters two laborers being brutally whipped by the roa...

A riotous, masterful, and tender portrait of the real modern India as seen through the truth-refracting fiction of Tamil literature's greatest living storyteller.A stunning new literary vision of India. In these dozen minutely observed stories, Jeyamohan juxtaposes the great themes of Indian life—politics, religion, caste, violence—in illuminating relation to the quiet internal machinery of his characters.In “A Hundred Armchairs," a bureaucrat receives the ...

Pothivelu Pandaram is known as a successful and God-fearing man about town–he has a loyal wife, three daughters, and ample money to pay for their dowries. However, it is an open secret that his success is fueled by a tawdry yet deeply profitable trade–for he owns a group of physically deformed beggars and places them outside various temples to make money for him. The beggars are mere "items" to Pandaram, hardly human, to be bought and sold like cattle. But when the novel descends right int...

“Its a peculiar apparatus,” said the Officer to the Traveller, gazing with a certain admiration at the device, with which he was, of course, thoroughly familiar. It appeared that the Traveller had responded to the invitation of the Commandant only out of politeness, when he had been asked to attend the execution of a soldier condemned for disobeying and insulting his superior. Of course, interest in the execution was not very high even in the penal colony itself. At least, here in the smal...

It begins with a familiar story of displacement.The people of Jambhli have been ousted from their homes with promises of rehabilitation, and compensation in cash and land, to make way for an irrigation project and the construction of a large dam. The Jambhlikars’ anguish at leaving behind everything they have known and resettling among hostile strangers – the beneficiaries of the dam project – and their desperate search for alternative employment, for which they ar...

Set against the backdrop of a crumbling matrilineal tarawad system of the Nairs in Kerala with its petty rivalries and jealousies, its sambandhan system of contractual marriage, its conflicts and problems, and the changes in land legislation which sharply erode the feudal order, Kaalam is the story of sethumadhavan Nair who starts out as an ambitious and confident adolescentbut in his journey towards adulthood, where material and social success go hand in hand, he is faced with an overwhelmin...

Step into a series of dazzling, funny, melancholy, and joyous moments with this collection of haiku masterworks. Beloved translator Peter Beilensons goals were twofold: to craft a book of haiku accessible to anyone, and to render his best guess at what the poets would have written in English. His translations preserve the sublime spirit of each verse, conjuring vivid visual and emotional impressions in spare words.Haiku icon Basho is represented amply here, as are imagery-virtuoso Buson and w...

Kuttiedathi and Other Stories is a careful collection of ten short stories. This collection brings together some of the most well known stories of M T Vasudevan Nair, fairly representative of his literary works. Written over a broad span of time from 1962 to 2000, the stories collected here reflect the built-in variety of his fictional concerns and the changing tones of his narration. M T Vasudevan Nair is a renowned Malayalam author and winner of the Jnanpith award for literature (1995). He...

Saroja and Kumaresan are young and in love. After meeting in a small southern Indian town, where Kumaresan works at a soda bottling shop, they quickly marry before returning to Kumaresan's family village to build a new life together. But they are harbouring a dangerous secret: Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the villagers find out, they will both be in grave peril.Faced with venom from her mother-in-law, and questions from her new neighbours, Saroja tries to...

This is the first collection of translations in English of stories originally written in Malayalam by Kamala Das under the pen name Madhavi Kutty. They amply demonstrate Kamala Dass special contribution to the short story in Malayalam. All the major attributes of her writing are evident: her subtlety and power in dealing with human relationships and intrigues of love, life and death and her earthiness, sensuousness and sensuality.