![]() ![]() In addition to their repudiation of social norms, they are often trapped inside the hermetically sealed environments of their turbulent minds. What makes these tales so tantalising is that Prabhakaran’s protagonists are all odd, unpredictable characters. The best story and also coincidentally the oldest is “Wild Goat” (the original in the Malayalam was published in 1987) in which the narrator George returns from college to find out his brother who has made a fortune off coffee plantations is making a run for political office. “Pigman”, which Prabhakaran himself adapted into a feature film of the same name, follows a young man who, after working as a junior accountant on a farm that rears Berkshire pigs for slaughter, is slowly driven to hallucinating about pigmen. In the titular story, inspired by Nikolai Gogol’s famous short story “The Diary of a Madman”, Aagney, an unemployed itinerant in his forties communicates with a suicidal rooster, goat, god, and even the Old Man of the Sea from The Odyssey. There are only five short stories in the collection, but all of them pack a punch with their fully realised worlds. The book’s translator, Jayasree Kalathil, whose own research deals with mental health, brings a strong curator’s eye to these stories, all of which deal with protagonists whose own realities collide with the artifice of life. Diary of a Malayali Madman pulls off the difficult feat of exemplifying the anxieties of being choked by the weight of social structures around us while also being compulsively readable.Ī collection of short fiction by celebrated Malayali author N Prabhakaran, it revels in its Foucauldian despair and Borgesian undertones. Do it too well and readers may shut the book gasping for air. VHP leader shot allegedly over argument about Mohan Bhagwat’s commentsĮxistential dread is a tricky quality to capture in fiction.Can India’s Opposition capitalise on the Adani fall to corner Modi?.Now in its 11th edition, Manohar Malgonkar’s classic revisits the plot to assassinate Mahatma Gandhi.India’s push to use sugar for fuel may create more problems than it solves.Start the week with a film: In ‘Mullum Malarum’, Rajinikanth before the ‘Superstar’ branding. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |