Innumerable strands of ethnic, regional and universal experiences are woven together in this collection of fine short fiction spanning four decades—1960_1990—in which the short story emerged as the definitive genre of modern Tamil literature. Twenty-nine famous names are represented here—from Rajanarayanan to Paavannan and many others who have encapsulated the joys, sorrows and peculiar challenges of life in Tamil Nadu. Taken together, these stories represent a certain world view in which old ideas of honour and prestige, and the attitude of resignation—to fate and to social hierarchies—are yielding place to an ethic of struggle and strategic compromise. The language itself is transformed in the process, churning up a new idiom that loses none of its freshness or vitality in translation.
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