Bharati Jagannathan
POONACHI: LOST IN THE FOREST by Perumal Murugan. Illustrations by Priya Kuriyan Red Panda, 2020, 24 pp., 249.00
November 2020, volume 44, No 11

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.

Continue reading this review