August 5: Pyre by Perumal Murugan
August 5, Saturday
12pm New York | 5pm London | Chennai 9.30pm
Friendly discussion about the novel, Pyre by Perumal Murugan. Translated from Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan. Discussion hosted by Amrita Ghosh.
Watch the recording here!
About the book
Saroja and Kumaresan are young and in love. After meeting in a small southern Indian town where Kumaresan works at a soda bottling shop, they quickly marry before returning to Kumaresan’s family village, where they hope to build a happy life together. But they are harboring a terrible secret: Saroja is from a different caste than Kumaresan, and if the villagers find out, they will both be in grave danger. Faced with venom from her mother-in-law and questions from her new neighbors, Saroja tries to adjust to a new lonely and uncomfortable life, while Kumaresan struggles to scrape together enough money for them to start over somewhere new. Will their love keep them safe in a world filled with thorns? In evocative prose, Perumal Murugan masterfully conjures a moving tale of innocent young love pitted against chilling violence.
Perumal Murugan is one of India’s most well-known literary writers. He has written eleven novels and five collections each of short stories and poetry. His novels One Part Woman and The Story of a Goat were both longlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature, and One Part Woman also won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman for writing in Indian languages and the Translation Prize from India’s National Academy of Letters.
About the host
Amrita Ghosh is an academic, writer and editor. She is Assistant Professor of South Asian Literatures at University of Central Florida in the department of English. Her book Kashmir’s Necropolis: New Literature and Visual Texts is forthcoming with Lexington Books.
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