A restlessness born of guilt and despair leads Ravi to embark on a journey that ends in the remote village of Khasak in the picturesque Palghat countryside in Kerala. A land from the past, potent with dreams and legends, enfolds the traveller in a powerful and unsettling embrace. Ravi is bewitched and entranced as everything around him-the villagers; their children whom he teaches in a makeshift school; the elders who see him as a threat; the toddy-tappers; the shamans-takes on the quality of myth. And then reality, painful and threatening, begins to intrude on the sojourner's resting place and Ravi begins to understand that there is no escape from the relentless dictates of karma... Often poetic and dark, always complex and rich, The Legends of Khasak, O.V. Vijayan's much-acclaimed first novel, translated into English by the author, is an extraordinary achievement

Annotation Fakir Mohan Senapati's Six Acres and a Third, originally published in 1901 as Chha Mana Atha, is a wry, powerful novel set in colonial India.

A Superb Collection Of Fiction From One Of India S Greatest Living Writers Some Of The Stories Included In This Collection Are: -The Legends Of Khasak -The Saga Of Dharmapuri -The Infinity Of Grace O.V. Vijayan Is One Of The Most Brilliant And Original Of The Contemporary Indian Authors. His Fiction, Written In Malayalam, Is Complex And Poetic, A Sumptuous Blend Of Myth, Dark Humour, Eroticism, Mystical Insights And A Uniquely Indian Brand Of Magic Realism. This Collection Brings Together For The First Time All Four Of Vijayan S Books Translated Into English So Far. In His Much-Acclaimed First Novel The Legends Of Khasak , Ravi, A Schoolteacher, Arrives In The Remote Village Of Khasak And Is Gradually Engulfed By The Dreams And Fables Of That Ancient Land. In The Controversial Political Allegory The Saga Of Dharmapuri , The Tyrannical President Of Dharmapuri And Siddhaartha, A Travelling Mystic And Messiah, Engage In An Unending Symbolic Battle. In The Award-Winning The Infinity Of Grace , Kunjunni, A Journalist, Goes To Calcutta To Cover The Bangladesh War, And Attempts To Reconnect With His Estranged Wife And Daughter Who Live There. Through The Personal Trauma That Follows, He Arrives At A Transcendental Understanding Of Life And The Harmony Implicit In Apparently Chaotic Events. The Final Section Of This Volume Comprises Twenty-One Short Stories-Which Include Classics Such As After The Hanging , Oil , Wind Flowers , Anachronisms And The Foetus . Together, They Bear Testimony To Vijayan S Skills As An Unusually Innovative And Evocative Writer Of Romances, Parables And Tales Of The Supernatural. A Definitive Collection, Selected Fiction Is Like A Good Piece Of Halwa. You Ll Never Want It To End. And By The Time You Re Through With It You Will Be A Member Of The Vijayan Fan Club. -The Week

WINNER OF THE JCB PRIZE FOR LITERATURE 2020. 'A novel of epic dimensions ... easily among the most accomplished fictional works in Malayalam.'K. SATCHIDANANDAN Vavachan is a Pulayan who gets the opportunity to play a policeman with an immense moustache in a musical drama. The character appears in only two scenes and has no dialogue. However, Vavachan's performance, and his moustache, terrify the mostly upper-caste audience, reviving in them memories of characters of Dalit power, such as Ravanan. Afterwards, Vavachan, whose people were traditionally banned from growing facial hair, refuses to shave off his moustache. Endless tales invent and reinvent the legend of his magic moustache in which birds roost, which allows its owner to appear simultaneously in different places and disappear in an instant, which grows as high as the sky and as thick as rainclouds -- and turn Vavachan into Moustache, a figure of mythic proportions.Set in Kuttanad, a below-sea-level farming region on the south-west coast of Kerala, the novel is as much a story of this land as it is of Vavachan and its other inhabitants. As they navigate the intricate waterscape, stories unfold in which ecology, power dynamics and politics become key themes. Originally published in Malayalam as Meesha, S. Hareesh's Moustache is a contemporary classic mixing magic, myth and metaphor into a tale of far-reaching resonance.

Modernism when viewed through the spectacles of Marxian aesthetics emerges as a problematic artistic movement, especially when placed within the context of social structures that define the cultural practices at any given point in time. The much discussed debate within the Marxist canon regarding the dialectic relationship between society and art in the context of modernism had stalwarts of Marxist criticism deliberating this relationship between art and society. From Europe, modernism spread to other parts of the world, including India where it captured the imagination of the writers of regional languages as well. In Kerala, with its staunch Marxian perspectives and its supporters including a faithful political network of leaders and followers, modernism invited heated debates of a similar nature. A debate was triggered off challenging the ideological frameworks of modernist aesthetics with a large part of the intelligentsia actively participating in it. Kerala Kaumudi magazine published these arguments as a series, leading to further discussions in the cultural and political discourses that shaped the sensibility of the times. This book is an attempt to explore this relationship with these debates and discussions as referral points. To substantiate the arguments, four texts that emerged as iconic texts are studied - O V Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak (1969)and The Saga of Dharmapuri (1985)and M Mukundan's On the Banks of Mayyazhi (1974) and God's Mischief (1989).

This amalgam of essay, literary criticism, and memoir blends into a tribute to the world of books. Chicago...

By the author of One Part Woman: “A haunting story of forbidden love set in Southern India that illustrates the cruel consequences of societal intolerance.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review 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, where they hope to build a happy life together. But they are harboring a terrible secret: Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the villagers find out, they will both be in grave danger. Faced with venom from her mother-in-law and questions from her new neighbors, Saroja tries to adjust to a new lonely and uncomfortable life, while Kumaresan struggles to scrape together enough money for them to start over somewhere new. But in a world filled with thorns, their love may not be enough to keep them safe.

The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader combines extracts from over 70 international practitioners, companies, collectives and makers from the fields of Dance, Theatre, Music, Live and Performance Art, and Activism to form an essential sourcebook for students, researchers and practitioners. This is the follow-on text from The Twentieth-Century Performance Reader, which has been the key introductory text to all kinds of performance for over 20 years since it was first published in 1996. Contributions from new and emerging practitioners are placed alongside those of long-established individual artists and companies, representing the work of this century’s leading practitioners through the voices of over 140 individuals. The contributors in this volume reflect the diverse and eclectic culture of practices that now make up the expanded field of performance, and their stories, reflections and working processes collectively offer a snapshot of contemporary artistic concerns. Many of the pieces have been specially commissioned for this edition and comprise a range of written forms – scholarly, academic, creative, interviews, diary entries, autobiographical, polemical and visual. Ideal for university students and instructors, this volume’s structure and global span invites readers to compare and cross-reference significant approaches outside of the constraints and simplifications of genre, encouraging cross-disciplinary understandings. For those who engage with new, live and innovative approaches to performance and the interplay of radical ideas, The Twenty-First Century Performance Reader is invaluable.