News

If Bhai (as Damodar Mauzo the Konkani writer and Sahitya Akademi award winner is fondly known in Goa) isn’t already in the canon of the great contemporary Indian short story writers, his nomination to the long list of the 25,000 Frank O’Connor Short Story Prize, one of the richest Short Story Collection prizes in the world, for Teresa’s Man and Other Stories from Goa, 2014 issued by Rupa, indicates that he’ll be arriving there quite soon.

Joothan: A Dalit’s Life has been reprinted in 2014 with an addition, ‘Remember ing Omprakash Valmiki’. This is the third reprint. The English translation of this originally Hindi book was first published by Columbia University Press at New York, as also by Samya at Kolkata in 2003. Omprakash Valmiki passed away in 2013, after fighting a two year battle with cancer.

Literature popularly defined as a mirror of society gets a radically different meaning in the novella, Pethavan by Imayam, published recently in English translation. The myriad functions of caste in Indian society got unveiled through this brilliant literary piece by a master story-teller. It invites us to read ourselves and our society vis-à-vis caste.

The Tamil novel, Koogai by Cho. Dharman, in English translation by Vasantha Surya invites us to read it within the ongoing debates over region-nation dilemma of Indianness.

Devanoora Mahadeva’s Kusumabale, ever since it was serialized in a Kannada magazine in 1984 and later published in book form in 1984, has evoked mixed responses from readers, activists and critics. However, everyone agrees that it is a great text, a classic in fact, unprecedented in its treatment of dalit experience both in its form and content.

Lalithambika Antharjanam’s work and life are ineluctably linked with the large-scale social and economic changes that Kerala experienced in the twentieth century.