This collection of fifty stories, part of a series published by Aleph Book Company of the many different languages of India, brings together some of the most widely read and loved writers of the Malayalam canon.AJ Thomas has both selected and translated the stories; no easy task. The fifty authors represented in this anthology span many stylistic and ideological periods in the 132-year-old history of the short story in Kerala’s literature.
Says Thomas: ‘After the action-dominated early stories, the short story was centred around, first, the specific outward expressions of life in the social-reformist stories, then the inner life of the individual and, finally, the abstract plane of indirect experiences full of paradoxes involving a philosophical outlook. The form evolved from the bulky narrative structure of the early days to a well-organized plot, then to the employment of language to generate multilevel meanings, and finally, to the deployment of symbols and images.’