Perumal Murugan is one of the foremost of Tamil writers today. Poonachi: Lost in the Forest is apparently extracted from a novel, Poonachi: Or the Story of a Black Goat, which I haven’t read, was short-listed for the JCB Prize for Literature. I have no doubt that it would be as fine a piece of work as any of his others, but this short extract, of a goat who gets lost in a forest and eventually returns to the old woman she lives with, is sweet without being outstanding.
November 2020, volume 44, No 11