T. Janakiraman. Translated from the original Tamil by Lakshmi Kannan. Introduction by Anita Balakrishnan

T.Janakiraman (1921–82), affectionately known as Thi Jaa, is one of the most influential figures of twentieth-century Tamil literature. He wrote about familial and interpersonal issues, with a focus on the ill-treatment of women, especially widows. His best-known novels, Mohamul, 1964, (The Thorn of Desire), Amma Vantal,1966, (English translation The Sins of Appu’s Mother) and Marappasu,1975, (Wooden Cow) present strong women with a mind of their own. Bilingual novelist, short story writer, poet and translator Lakshmi Kannan had published an English translation of Marappasu in 1979. She felt the need to do a revised version; the birth centenary of the novelist provided the occasion to publish it.


Reviewed by: Shyamala A Narayan
Nayantara Sahgal

I belong to a generation that grew up reading Nayantara Sahgal. Her early works, like her autobiography Prison and Chocolate Cake, captured for us a time that many of us had not personally experienced but could vividly imagine through her writings.Even as India grew older, we aged and the idealism of youth began to lose some of its sheen, Nayantara Sahgal’s was a voice that never failed to make you pause and think. 


Reviewed by: Kalpana Sharma
Mahadevi Varma.Translated from the original Hindi by Ruth Vanita

The canonical Hindi poet Mahadevi Varma (1907-1987) has to some extent suffered from being too revered. In well-meaning hagiography, she has been cast as overly pious, almost joyless in her asceticism for her art. In this context, Ruth Vanita’s attentive translation of Varma’s collection of sketches, My Family, has revitalized Varma as more spiritually buoyant, as someone deeply invested and in love with wider, larger, more spiralling notions of family and kinship—especially one that includes animal companions.


Reviewed by: Nikhil Govind
Chandrahas Choudhury

The number of celebrated poets and novelists who began their career reviewing books is probably much higher than is currently known. To start with, current literary culture, while being sustained invisibly by reviewing, is rather uncharitable towards the modest review. Writers too have colluded with this ethos and have tended to distance themselves from their own ‘jobbing work’ once they have achieved name and fame. Dr. Johnson of the eighteenth century was probably the last known writer of English literature who was as much of a ‘grandly generalizing sage’ as he was a ‘proletarianized hack’ (Terry Eagleton, The Function of Criticism, p. 32.)


Reviewed by: Himansu S Mohapatra
Abdulrazak Gurnah

Afterlives is the latest publication from Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Nobel Prize winner for literature in 2021. The Nobel Committee has very aptly remarked that Gurnah is being awarded for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fate of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents (The New York Times).


Reviewed by: Sharmila Narayana
AA Manavalan. Translated from the original Thamizh by CT Indra and Prema Jagannathan

A book awarded the Saraswati Samman, Ramakathaiyum Iramayanankalum (2005) is an ambitious work by the Thamizh scholar AA Manavalan, a comparative study of forty-eight Ramakathas (though it references more) from the 5th century BCE to the 19th century CE, written in twenty-two languages—Pali, Sanskrit, Prakrit, Tibetan, Tamil, Old Javanese, Japanese, Telugu, Assamese, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, Marathi, Hindi, Odia, Persian, Malay, Burmese, Filipino, Thai, Laotian and Kashmiri. We are fortunate now to have a meticulously done translation in English by CT Indra and Prema Jagannathan, one that is extremely readable without losing out on the scholarship and the research that has gone into both the Thamizh work and the translation.


Reviewed by: GJV Prasad