Perhaps the only novel to have been reprinted nearly every year for over a hundred years, Indulekha (1889) is widely held to be the first Malayalam novel. Often called an 'accidental' and 'flawed' work, at its core lies a love story. The setting of the novel is the Nair community of Kerala, which had for centuries practised polyandrous matriliny, a most unusual form of inheritance through the women whom both property and authority favoured. It gives us glimpses ...
