A prolific writer, a respected journalist, connoisseur of arts, and a revolutionary, R Krishnamurthy, better known as Kalki, was a literary giant, whose body of work includes Alai Osai, and his famous trilogy, Parthiban Kanavu, Ponniyin Selvan and Sivakamiyin Sabatham. Kalki’s novels, written between 1941-54, belonged to a historical genre, a mix of drama, action, intrigue and passion
Serialized in the Malayalam weekly Mathrubhumi in 1983, and published as a novel a year later, CV Balakrishnan’s Ayussinte Pusthakam has become over the years a widely read work that is regularly prescribed in university curricula. The novel’s initial success was restricted to a more youthful audience, but today it has been published in 26 editions, a testimony to the acclaim and admiration which this work continues to elicit.
Saudamini Deo’s English translation of short stories by Bhuwaneshwar Prasad marks a significant event in Hindi literature. Not only does it reinvigorate a chronically under-appreciated Hindi writer in a new language, but it also attempts to rewrite the story of Hindi modernism as seen through the lens of non-canonical texts.
This Hindi novel is a recent composition of the renowned Hindi novelist Maitreyi Pushpa who is widely known as the author of Idamnamama (that is, Idam Na Mama or ‘It is not mine’) and Chaak (Potter’s Wheel), and many other novels. She also made news with her subversive autobiographical narratives and is known as a feminist novelist who has based her writings on women’s issues.
Ranendra’s is an important—and bold—signature in contemporary Hindi literature. As a novelist, who also happens to be a poet, he enters the landscape of his creation with nuanced, almost poignant, sensitivity to map the existential, ideological and, by extension, ontological contours within contemporary spaces. While in his earlier novels—Global Gaon ke Devta (2006) and Gayab Hota Desh (2014)—he had etched the excruciating reality of the tribals.
To say that Neelakshi Singh’s novel Khela or play is about the play of power-that-be in this civilization, controlling the price of crude oil and the collaterals of religious fundamentalism and terrorism would be less than half-truth. It is mostly about the journey of a middle-class girl, Vara Kulkarni, peeping through the jute-sacks of partition of a joint family to look at the estranged family’s life to her looking into a world riddled by conspiracies, violence and displacement.