Author: Eminent Contributors
Editor(s): V Abdulla / R E Ashir
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2004
Language: English
Pages: 208
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0143030507
Description
A classic collection of stories showcasing some of India’s best-known writers.
After a hesitant start towards the end of the nineteenth century, short fiction in Malayalam came into its own in the 1930s. Since then, writer after writer has experimented with content, style and language to give the genre a unique standing in contemporary Indian literature, as perhaps the most translated, not just into English and other Indian languages but also into other media such as film and television.
From Vaikom Muhammad basher and O V Vijayan to Kamala Das and Sarah Joseph, this volume brings together an extraordinary range of writers and themes. There are, among others, M T Vasudevan Nair’s Oppol, a story about childhood innocence and loss, which was made into an award-winning film; Paul Zacharia’s Bhaskara Pattelar and My Life’s a brilliant psychological examination of the master-slave dialectic, Lalithambika Antherjanam’s path-breaking Goddess of Revenge in which a young Namboodiri woman becomes a prostitute to expose the hypocrisy of her husband and their rigidly orthodox community; and N S Madhavan’s classic story of an upper-caste widow who finds redemption in the forbidden touch of a Pulaya. Translated with flair and integrity, these stories capture the vibrancy of a literary culture at its creative best.
EDITORS
V ABDULLA was born in 1921 in Tikkodi near Kozhikode. His father, B Poker Sahib, was a distinguished lawyer and member of the Constituent Assembly and of the Lok Sabha. After graduating MA and BL, Abdulla joined Orient Longman, from where he retired as divisional director in charge of publication. For a time he was an Executive Member of the Kerala Sangit Natak Akademi. In 1998 he received the Yatra Award. He produced two films in Malayalam, Ammaye Kaanaan and Adyakiranangal. For many years he lived in Chennai. He passed away on 16 May 2003 at Kannur, Kerala, after a brief illness.
R E ASHER is professor emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Edinburgh, where in addition to his teaching and research appointment he also held senior administrative post. He has published books on the literature of the French Renaissance (the field of the first of his two doctorates), on the history of linguistics, and on contemporary Malayalam literature, grammars of Tamil and Malayalam, and translations of five Malayalam novels. He was born in 1926 in 1926 in the small village of Gringley-on-the –Hill, Nottinghamshire, England.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
The Packet of Rice
Mother
Anal Haq
The Goddess of Revenge
In the Floods
The Night Queen
The Bull
The Death of Makhan Singh
The Razor’s Edge
After the Hanging
Wind Flowers
A Colony of Hermaphrodites
Elder Sister
Sherlock
The Sixth Finger
The Bathroom
Bhaskara Pattelar and My Life
The Scooter
Fear of Pulayas
Notes on contributors