Penguin presents Pyre, a powerful and gripping tale penned by Perumal Murugan, one of India’s leading contemporary storytellers. Pyre tells a moving, haunting tale of love threatened by societal prejudice and is translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan.
The summary:
Saroja and Kumaresan are in love. After a hasty wedding, they arrive in Kumaresan’s village, harbouring the dangerous secret that theirs is an inter-caste marriage, likely to anger the villagers should they learn of it. Kumaresan is confident that all will be well. He naively believes that after the initial round of curious questions, the inquiries will die down and the couple will be left alone. But nothing is further from the truth. The villagers strongly suspect that Saroja must belong to a different caste. It is only a matter of time before their suspicions harden into certainty and, outraged, they set about exacting their revenge.
With spare, powerful prose, Murugan masterfully conjures a terrifying vision of intolerance in this devastating tale of innocent young love pitted against chilling savagery.
The author:
Perumal Murugan is the star of contemporary Tamil literature. An award-winning writer, poet and scholar, he has garnered both critical acclaim and commercial success for his vast array of work. Some of his novels have been translated into English to immense acclaim, including Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the Kiriyama Prize in 2005, and One Part Woman, his best-known work, which was shortlisted for the Crossword Award and won the prestigious ILF Samanvay Bhasha Samman in 2015.
Praise for the author:
‘A great literary chronicler . . . Murugan is at the height of his creative powers’
The Hindu
‘Murugan is the most accomplished of his generation of Tamil writers’
Caravan
‘Perumal Murugan’s voice is distinct . . . His characters, dialogues and locales are unerringly drawn and intensely evocative . . . A superb writer’
Indian Express
The translator:
Aniruddhan Vasudevan is a performer, writer, translator and PhD student in anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. His much-lauded translation of Perumal Murugan’s One Part Womanwon the Tamil Literary Garden’s (Canada) Best Translation Award in 2013.